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HERE, THERE AND 
EVERYWHERE 



By 

Lord Frederic Hamilton 



THE VANISHED POMPS 
OF YESTERDAY 

THE DAYS BEFORE 
YESTERDAY 

HERE, THERE AND 
EVERYWHERE 

George H. Dor an Company 
New York 



HERE, THERE AND 
EVERYWHERE 



BY 

LORD FREDERIC HAMILTON 

Author of "The Vanished Pomps of Yesterday," 
"The Days Before Yesterday," etc. 




NEW ^ISJr YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



Qx n 



i 






c*f& 



COPYRIGHT, 1 921, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



«» * «» 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

g)C!.A624.870 



TO 

MY GALLANT CANADIAN FRIEND 

GERALD RUTHERFORD, M.C. 

OF 
WINNIPEG 



FOREWORD 

So kindly a reception have the public accorded to 
"The Days Before Yesterday" that I have ventured 
into print yet again. 

This is less a book of reminiscences than a re- 
capitulation of various personal experiences in many 
lands, some of which may be viewed from un- 
accustomed angles. 

The descriptions in Chapter VIII of cattle-working 
and of horse-breaking on an Argentine estancia have 
already appeared in slightly different form in an 
earlier book of mine, now out of print. 

F. H. 

London, 1921. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 



PAQE 



An ideal form of travel for the elderly — A claim to roam at 
will in print — An invitation to a big-game shoot — De- 
tails of journey to Cooch Behar — The commercial mag- 
nate and the station-master — An outbreak of cholera — 
Arrival at Cooch Behar Palace — Our Australian Jehu 
— The shooting camp — Its gigantic scale — The daily 
routine — "Chota Begum/' my confidential elephant — Her 
well-meant attentions — My first tiger — Another lucky 
shot — The leopard and the orchestra — The Maharanee 
of Cooch Behar — An evening in the jungle — The buns 
and the bear — Jungle pictures — A charging rhinoceros 
— Another rhinoceros incident — The amateur Mahouts — 
Circumstances preventing a second visit to Cooch Behar 15 

CHAPTER II 

Mighty Kinchin janga — The inconceivable splendours of a 
Himalayan sunrise — The last Indian telegraph office — 
The irrepressible British Tommy — An improvised garden 
— An improvised Durbar hall — A splendid ceremony — A 
native dinner — The disguised Europeans — Our shocking 
table-manners — Incidents — Two impersonations ; one suc- 
cessful, the other the reverse — I come off badly — Indian 
jugglers — The rope-trick — The juggler, the rope, and 
the boy — An inexplicable incident — A performing cobra 
scores a success — Ceylon "Devil Dancers" — Their per- 
formance — The Temple of the Tooth — The uncovering of 
the Tooth — Details concerning — An abominable libel — 
Tea and coffee — Peradeniya Gardens — The upas tree of 
Java — Colombo an Eastern Clapham Junction — The 
French lady and the savages — The small Bermudian and 
the inhabitants of England 40 

CHAPTER III 

Frenchmen pleasant travelling companions — Their limita- 
tions — Vicomte de Vogue — The innkeeper and the ikon 



x CONTENTS 

PAGE 

— An early oil-burning steamer — A modern Bluebeard — 
His "Blue Chamber" — Dupleix — His ambitious scheme 
— A disastrous period for France — A personal apprecia- 
tion of the Emperor Nicholas II — A learned but versatile 
Orientalist — Pidgin English — Hong-Kong — An ancient 
Portuguese city in China — Duck junks — A comical 
Marathon race — Canton — Its fascination and its appal- 
ling smells — The malevolent Chinese devils — Precautions 
adopted against — "Foreign devils" — The fortunate 
limitations of Chinese devils — The City of the Dead — A 
business interview 70 

CHAPTER IV 

The glamour of the West Indies — Captain Marryat and 
Michael Scott — Deadly climate of the islands in the 
eighteenth century — The West Indian planters— Differ- 
ence between East and West Indies — "Let us eat and 
drink, for to-morrow we die" — Training-school for Brit- 
ish Navy — A fruitless voyage - — Quarantine — Distant 
view of Barbados — Father Labat — The last of the 
Emperors of Byzantium — Delightful little Lady Nugent 
and her diary of 1802 — Her impressions of Jamaica — 
Wealthy planters — Their hideous gormandising — A 
simple morning meal — An aldermanic dinner — How the 
little Nugents were gorged — Haiti — Attempts of Gen- 
eral Le Clerc to secure British intervention in Haiti — 
Presents to Lady Nugent — Her Paris dresses described 
— Our arrival in Jamaica — Its marvellous beauty — The 
bewildered Guardsman — Little trace of Spain left in 
Jamaica — The Spaniards as builders — British and Span- 
ish Colonial methods contrasted 102 

CHAPTER V 

An election meeting in Jamaica — Two family experiences at 
contested elections — Novel South African methods — 
Unattractive Kingston — A driving tour through the 
island — The Guardsman as orchid-hunter — Derelict 
country houses — An attempt to reconstruct the past — 
The Fourth-Form room at Harrow — Elizabethan Harro- 
vians — I meet many friends of my youth — The "Sunday" 
books of the 'sixties — "Black and White" — Arrival of 
the French fleet — Its inner meaning — International 
courtesies — A delicate attention — Absent alligators — 



CONTENTS xi 

PAGB 

The mangrove swamp — A preposterous suggestion — The 
swamps do their work — Fever — A very gallant ap- 
prentice^ — What he did 131 

CHAPTER VI 

The Spanish Main — Its real meaning — A detestable region 
— Tarpon and sharks — The isthmus — The story of the 
great pearl "La elegrina" — The Irishman and the 
Peruvian — The vagaries of the Southern Cross — The 
great Kingston earthquake — Point of view of small boys 
— Some earthquake incidents — "Flesh-coloured" stock- 
ings — Negro hysteria — A family incident, and the un- 
fortunate Archbishop — Port Royal — A sugar estate — A 
scene from a boy's book in real life — Cocoa-nuts — Reef- 
fishing — Two young men of great promise . . . .160 

CHAPTER VII 

Appalling ignorance of geography amongst English people 
— Novel pedagogic methods — "Happy Families'* — An 
instructive game — Bermuda — A waterless island — A most 
inviting archipelago — Bermuda the most northern coral- 
atoll — The reefs and their polychrome fish — A "water- 
glass" — Sea-gardens — An ideal sailing-place — How the 
Guardsman won his race — A miniature Parliament — 
Unfounded aspersions on the Bermudians — Red and 
blue birds — Two pardonable mistakes — Soldier garden- 
ers — Officers' wives — The little roaming home-makers — 
A pleasant island — The inquisitive German naval offi- 
cers — "The Song of the Bermudians" 191 

CHAPTER VIII 

The demerits of the West Indies classified — The utter ruin 
of St. Pierre — The Empress Josephine — A transplanted 
brogue — Vampires — Lost in a virgin forest — Dictator- 
Presidents, Castro and Rosas — The mentality of a South 
American — "The Liberator" — The Basques and their 
national game — Love of English people for foreign 
words — Yellow fever — Life on an Argentina estancia — 
How cattle are worked- ^The lasso and the "bolas" — 
Ostriches — Venomous toads — The youthful rough-rider 
— His methods — Fuel difficulties — The vast plains — The 
wonderful bird-life 220 



xii CONTENTS 



CHAPTER IX 



PAGH 



Difficulties of an Argentine railway engineer — Why Argen- 
tina has the Irish gauge — A sudden contrast — A more 
violent contrast — Names and their obligations — Cape 
Town — The thoroughness of the Dutch pioneers — A dry 
and thirsty land — The beautiful Dutch Colonial houses 
— The Huguenot refugees — The Rhodes fruit-farms — 
Surf-riding — Groote Schuur — General Botha — The 
Rhodes Memorial — The episode of the sick boy — A visit 
from Father Neptune — What pluck will do . . . .251 

CHAPTER X 

In France at the outbreak of the war — The tocsin — The 
"voice of the bell" at Harrow — Canon Simpson's theory 
about bells — His "five- tone" principle — Myself as a 
London policeman — Experiences with a celebrated 
Church choir — The "Grill-room Club" — Famous mem- 
bers — Arthur Cecil — Some neat answers — Sir Leslie 
Ward — Beerbohm Tree and the vain old member — 
Amateur supers — Juvenile disillusionment — The Knight 
— The Baron — Age of romance passed . . . . . 282 

CHAPTER XI 

Dislike of the elderly to change — Some legitimate grounds 
of complaint — Modern pronunciation of Latin — How a 
European crisis was averted by the old-fashioned 
method — Lord Dufferin's Latin speech — Schoolboy 
costume of a hundred years ago — Discomforts of travel 
in my youth — A crack liner of the 'eighties — Old 
travelling carriages — An election incident — Headlong 
rush of extraordinary turn-out — The politically-minded 
signalman and the doubtful voter — "Decent bodies" — 
Confidence in the future — Conclusion 308 

Index • , #l i#i . #! ;# . , ;#) , # . [# > t#] 1#J M w # . 025 



HERE, THERE AND 
EVERYWHERE 



HERE, THERE AND 
EVERYWHERE 



CHAPTER I 

An ideal form of travel for the elderly — A claim to roam at 
will in print — An invitation to a big-game shoot — Details 
of journey to Cooch Behar — The commercial magnate and 
the station-master — An outbreak of cholera — Arrival at 
Cooch Behar Palace — Our Australian Jehu — The Shooting 
Camp — Its gigantic scale — The daily routine — "Chota 
Begum/' my confidential elephant — Her well-meant atten- 
tions — My first tiger — Another lucky shot — The leopard and 
the orchestra — The Maharanee of Cooch Behar — An evening 
in the jungle — The buns and the bear — Jungle pictures — A 
charging rhinoceros — Another rhinoceros incident — The 
amateur mahouts — Circumstances preventing a second visit 
to Cooch Behar. 

The drawbacks of advancing years are so painfully- 
obvious to those who have to shoulder the burden 
of a long tale of summers, that there is no need to 
enlarge upon them. 

The elderly have one compensation, however; they 
have well-filled store-houses of reminiscences, chests 
of memories which are the resting-place of so many 
recollections that their owner can at will re-travel in 
one second as much of the surface of this globe as it 
has been his good fortune to visit, and this, too, under 
the most comfortable conditions imaginable. 

Not for him the rattle of the wheels of the train as 

15 



16 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

they grind the interminable miles away; not for him 
the insistent thump of the engines as they relentlessly 
drive the great liner through angry Atlantic surges 
to her far-off destination in smiling Southern seas. 
The muffled echoes of London traffic, filtering through 
the drawn curtains, are undisturbed by such grossly 
material reminders of modern engineering triumphs, 
for the elderly traveller journeys in a comfortable 
easy-chair before a glowing fire, a cigar in his mouth, 
and a long tumbler conveniently accessible to his 
hand. 

The street outside is shrouded in November fog; 
under the steady drizzle, the dripping pavements re- 
flect with clammy insistence the flickering gas-lamps, 
and everything, as Mr. Mantalini would have put it, 
"is demnition moist and unpleasant," whilst a few 
feet away, a grey-haired traveller is basking in the 
hot sunshine of a white coral strand, with the cocoa- 
nut palms overhead whispering their endless secrets 
to each other as they toss their emerald-green fronds 
in the strong Trade winds, the little blue wavelets of 
the Caribbean Sea lap-lapping as they pretend to 
break on the gleaming milk-white beach. 

It is really an ideal form of travel! No discom- 
forts, no hurryings to catch connections, no passports 
required, no passage money, and no hotel bills ! What 
more could any one ask? The journeys can be varied 
indefinitely, provided that the owner of the store- 
house has been careful to keep its shelves tidily ar- 
ranged. India? The second shelf on the left. South 
Africa? The one immediately below it. Canada? 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 17 

South America? The West Indies? There they all 
are, each one in its proper place! 

This private Thomas Cook & Son's office has the 
further advantage of being eminently portable. 
Wherever its owner goes, it goes, too. For the elderly 
this seems the most practical form of Travel Bureau, 
and it is incontestably the most economical one in 
these days when prices soar sky-high. 

There is so much to see in this world of ours, and 
just one short lifetime in which to see it! I am fully 
conscious of the difficulty of conveying to others im- 
pressions which remain intensely vivid to myself, and 
am also acutely alive to the fact that matters which 
appear most interesting to one person, drive others to 
martyrdoms of boredom. 

In attempting to reproduce various personal ex- 
periences on paper, I shall claim the roaming free- 
dom of the fireside muser, for he can in one second 
skip from Continent to Continent and vault over gaps 
of thirty years and more, just as the spirit moves him; 
indeed, to change the metaphor, before one record has 
played itself out, he can turn on a totally different 
one without rising from his chair, adjusting a new 
needle, or troubling to re-wind the machine, for this 
convenient mental apparatus reproduces automati- 
cally from its repertory whatever air is required. 

Having claimed the privilege of roaming at will far 
from my subject, I may say that ever since my boy- 
hood I had longed to take part in a big-game shoot, 
so when the late Maharajah of Cooch Behar invited 
me in 1891 to one of his famous shooting-parties, I ac- 



18 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

cepted with alacrity, for the Cooch Behar shoots were 
justly famed throughout India. The rhinoceros was 
found there, tigers, as Mrs. O'Dowd of Vanity Fair 
would have remarked, "were as plentiful as cab- 
bages" ; there were bears, too, leopards and water buf- 
faloes, everything, in short, that the heart of man 
could desire. It was no invitation to travel five hun- 
dred miles for two days' shooting only, there were to 
be five solid weeks of it in camp, and few people en- 
tertained on so princely a scale as the Maharajah. It 
was distinctly an invitation to be treasured — and 
gratefully accepted. 

The five-hundred-mile journey between Calcutta 
and Cooch Behar was unquestionably a varied one. 
There were four hours' train on the broad-gauge rail- 
way, an hour's steamer to cross the Ganges, ten hours' 
train on a narrow-gauge railway, three hours' propel- 
ling by poles in a native house-boat down a branch of 
the Brahmaputra, six miles of swamp to traverse on 
elephants, thirty miles to travel on the Maharajah's 
private two-and-a-half -feet-gauge toy railway, and, 
to conclude with, a twenty-five-mile drive. 

Cooch Behar is now, I believe, directly linked up 
with Calcutta by rail. 

We left Calcutta a party of four. My nephew, 
General Sir Henry Streatfeild, and his wife, another 
of the Viceroy's aides-de-camp, myself, and a certain 
genial Calcutta business magnate, most popular of 
Anglo-Indians. As we had a connection to catch at 
a junction on the narrow-gauge railway, an intermin- 
able wait at a big station in the early morning was 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 19 

disconcerting, for the connection would probably be 
missed. The jovial, burly Englishman occupied the 
second sleeping-berth in my compartment. As the 
delay lengthened, he, having some official connection 
with the East Bengal State Railway, jumped out of 
bed and went on to the platform in Anglo-Indian 
fashion, clad merely in pyjamas and slippers. Ap- 
proaching the immensely pompous native station- 
master he upbraided him in no measured terms for the 
long halt. Through the window I could hear every 
word of their dialogue. "This delay is perfectly scan- 
dalous, station-master. I shall certainly report it in 
Calcutta." "Would you care, sir, to enter offeecial 
complaint in book kept for that purpose?"! "By 
George! I will!" answered the man of jute and in- 
digo, hot with indignation. He was conducted 
through long passages to the station-master's office at 
the back of the building, where a strongly worded 
complaint was entered in the book. "And now, may I 
ask," questioned the irate business man, "when you 
mean to start this infernal train ?" "Oh, the terain, sir, 
has already deeparted these five minutes," answered 
the bland native. Fortunately there was a goods train 
immediately following the mail, and some four hours 
afterwards our big friend alighted from a goods brake- 
van in a furious temper. He had had nothing what- 
ever to eat, and was still in pyjamas, bare feet and 
slippers at ten in the morning. We had delayed the 
branch train as no one seemed in any particular hurry, 
so all was well. 
During a subsequent journey over the same line, 



20 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

we had an awful experience. Through the Alipore 
suburb of Calcutta there runs a little affluent of the 
Hooghly known as Tolly Gunge. For some reason 
this insignificant stream is regarded as peculiarly sa- 
cred by Hindoos, and every five years vast numbers 
of pilgrims come to bathe in and drink Tolly Gunge. 
The stream is nothing now but an open sewer, but no 
warnings of the doctors, and no Government edicts 
can prevent natives from regarding this as a place of 
pilgrimage, rank poison though the waters of Tolly 
Gunge must be. 

A party of us left Calcutta on a shooting expedi- 
tion during one of these quinquennial pilgrimages. 
We found the huge Sealdah station packed with 
dense crowds of home-going pilgrims. The station- 
master was at his wits' end to provide accommodation, 
for every third-class carriage was already full to over- 
flowing, and still endless hordes of devotees kept ar- 
riving. He finally had a number of covered trucks 
coupled on to the train, into which the pilgrims were 
wedged as tightly as possible, a second engine was 
attached, and we started. Next morning I was awak- 
ened by a nephew of mine, who cried with an awe- 
struck face, "My God! It is perfectly awful! Look 
out of the window!" It was a fearful sight. The 
waters of Tolly Gunge had done their work, and chol- 
era had broken out during the night amongst the 
densely packed pilgrims. Men were carrying out 
dead bodies from the train ; there were already at least 
fifty corpses laid on the platform, and the tale of dead 
increased every minute. Others, stricken with the fell 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 21 

disease, were lying on the platform, still alive, but in 
a state of collapse, or in the agonising cramps of this 
swift-slaying scourge. There happened to be two 
white doctors in the train, who did all that was pos- 
sible for the sufferers, but, beyond the administration 
of opium, medical science is powerless in cholera cases. 
The horrors of that railway platform fixed themselves 
indelibly on my memory. I can never forget it. 

The late Maharajah of Cooch Behar had had a long 
minority, the soil of his principality was very fertile 
and well-cultivated, and so efficiently was the little 
State administered by the British Resident that the 
Maharajah found himself at his majority the for- 
tunate possessor of vast sums of ready money. The 
Government of India had erected him out of his sur- 
plus revenues a gigantic palace of red-brick, a singu- 
larly infelicitous building material for that burning 
climate. Nor can it be said that the English architect 
had been very successful in his elevation. He had ap- 
parently anticipated the design of the Victoria and 
Albert Museum, and had managed to produce a build- 
ing even less satisfactory to the eye than the vast pile 
at the corner of Cromwell Road. He had also 
crowned his edifice with a great dome. The one prac- 
tical feature of the building was that it was only one 
room thick, and that every room was protected by a 
broad double verandah on both sides. The direct rays 
of the sun were, therefore, powerless to penetrate to 
the interior, and with the double verandahs the faint- 
est breath of air sent a draught through every room 
in the house. 



22 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

We reached Cooch Behar after dark, and it was 
somewhat of a surprise to find the Maharajah and his 
entire family roller-skating in the great central domed 
hall of the palace, to the strains of a really excellent 
string band. The Maharajah having a great liking 
for Europea music, had a private orchestra of 
thirty-five natives who, under the skilled tuition of 
a Viennese conductor, had learnt to play with all the 
fire and vim of one of those unapproachable Austrian 
bands, which were formerly (I emphasise the were) 
the delight of every foreigner in Vienna. These na- 
tive players had acquired in playing dance music the 
real Austrian "broken time," and could make their 
violins wail out the characteristic "thirds" and "sixths" 
in the harmonies of little airy, light "Wiener Coup- 
lets" nearly as effectively as Johann Strauss' famous 
orchestra in the "Volks-Garten" in Vienna. 

The whole scene was rather unexpected in the home 
of a native prince in the wilds of East Bengal. 

The Maharajah had fixed on a great tract of jungle 
in Assam, over the frontier of India proper, as the 
field of operations for his big-game shoot of 1891, on 
account of the rhinoceros and buffaloes that fre- 
quented the swamps there. As he did not do things 
by halves, he had had a rough road made connecting 
Cooch Behar with his great camp, and had caused 
temporary bridges to be built over all the streams on 
the way. Owing to the convenient bamboo, this is 
fairly easy of achievement, for the bamboo is at the 
same time tough and pliable, and bamboo bridges, in 
spite of their flimsy appearance, can carry great 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 23 

weights, and can be run up in no time, and kindly Na- 
ture furnishes in Bengal an endless supply of this 
adaptable building material. 

Our Calcutta party were driven out to the camp by 
the Maharajah's Australian trainer in a brake-and- 
four. I had heard before of the recklessness and skill 
of Australian stage-coach drivers, but had had no 
previous personal experience of it. Frankly, it is not 
an experience I should care to repeat indefinitely. 
I have my own suspicions that that big Australian 
was trying, if I may be pardoned a vulgarism, "to 
put the wind up us." Bang! against a tree-trunk on 
the off-side. Crash ! against another on the near-side ; 
down a steep hill at full gallop, and over a creaking, 
swaying, loudly protesting bamboo bridge that seemed 
bound to collapse under the impact; up the corre- 
sponding ascent as hard as the four Walers could lay 
leg to the ground ; off the track, tearing through the 
scrub on two wheels, righting again to shave a big 
tree by a mere hair's-breadth ; it certainly was a fine 
exhibition of nerve and of recklessness redeemed by 
skill, but I do not think that elderly ladies would 
have preferred it to their customary jog-trot behind 
two fat and confidential old slugs. One wondered 
how the harness held together under our Australian 
Jehu's vagaries. 

The Maharajah had chosen the site of his camp 
well. On a bare maidan overhanging a turbulent 
river a veritable city of white tents gleamed in the 
sunshine, all neatly ranged in streets and lanes. The 
river was not, as most Indian rivers in the dry season, 



24 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

a mere trickle of muddy water meandering through 
a broad expanse of stones and sand-spits, but a clear, 
rushing stream, tumbling and laughing on its way as 
gaily as any Scotch salmon river, and forming deep 
pools where great mahseer lurked under the waving 
fringes of water-weeds, fat fish who could be en- 
trapped with a spoon in the early morning. 

Each guest had a great Indian double tent, bigger 
than most London drawing-rooms. The one tent was 
pitched inside the other after the fashion of the coun- 
try, with an air-space of about one foot between to 
keep out the fierce sun. Indeed, triple-tent would 
be a more fitting expression, for the inner tent had 
a lining dependent from it of that Indian cotton fab- 
ric printed in reds and blues which we use for bed 
quilts. Every tent was carpeted with cotton dhurees, 
and completely furnished with dressing-tables and 
chests of drawers, as well as writing-table, sofa and 
arm-chairs; whilst there was a little covered canvas 
porch outside, fitted with chairs in which to take the 
air, and a small attendant satellite of a tent served 
as a bath-room, with big tin tub and a little trench 
dug to carry the water away. Nothing could be more 
complete, but I found my watchful old "bearer" al- 
ready at work raising all my trunks, gun-cases, and 
other possessions on little stilts of bamboo, for his 
quick eye had detected signs of white ants. By the 
end of our stay in camp I had reason to congratulate 
myself on my faithful "bearer's" foresight, for none 
of my own things were touched, whilst every one else 
was bemoaning the havoc the white ants had played 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 25 

with their belongings. The guest-tents formed three 
sides of a square facing the river, and in the centre 
of the open space stood a large shamyanah, or flat- 
roofed tent with open sides, which served as dining- 
room and general living-room. There are certainly- 
distinct advantages in a climate so settled that periods 
of daily sunshine or of daily rain really form part of 
the calendar, and can be predicted with mathematical 
certainty. 

It so happened that the Census of 1891 was taken 
whilst we were in camp, so I can give the exact num- 
ber of retainers whom the Maharajah brought with 
him. It totalled 473, including mahouts and elephant- 
tenders, grooms, armourers, taxidermists, tailors, 
shoemakers, a native doctor and a dispenser, and boat- 
men, not to mention the Viennese conductor and the 
thirty-five members of the orchestra, cooks, bakers, 
and table-waiters. The Maharajah certainly did 
things on a grand scale. One of the English guests 
gave, with perfect truth, his place of birth as required 
in the Indian Census Return as "a first-class carriage 
on the London and North-Western Railway, some- 
where between Bletchley and Euston; the precise spot 
being unnoticed either by myself or the other person 
principally concerned." 

The daily routine of life in the camp was some- 
thing like this: We men all rose at daybreak, some 
going for a ride, others endeavouring with a spoon to 
lure the cunning mahseer in the swift-running river, 
or going for a three-mile walk through the jungle 
tracks. Then a bath, and breakfast followed at nine, 



26 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

when the various shikaries came in with their reports. 
Should a tiger have made a "kill," he would be found, 
with any luck, during the heat of the day close to the 
body of his victim. The "howdah" elephants would 
all be sent on to the appointed rendezvous, the entire 
party going out to meet them on "pad" elephants. 
I do not believe that more uncomfortable means of 
progression could possibly be devised. A pad ele- 
phant has a large mattress strapped on to its back, 
over which runs a network of stout cords. Four or 
five people half-sit, half -recline on this mattress, hang- 
ing on for dear life to the cord network. The Euro- 
pean, being unused to this attitude, will soon feel 
violent cramps shooting through his limbs, added to 
which there is a disconcerting feeling of instability in 
spite of the tightly grasped cords. Nothing, on the 
other hand, can be more comfortable than a well- 
appointed howdah, where one is quite alone except 
for the mahout perched on the elephant's neck. The 
Maharajah's howdahs were all of cane-work, with a 
softly padded seat and a leather-strap back, which 
yielded to the motion of the great beast. In front 
was a gun-rack holding five guns and rifles, and large 
pockets at the side thoughtfully contained bottles of 
lemonade (the openers of which were never forgot- 
ten) and emergency packets of biscuits. 

The Maharajah owned about sixty elephants, in 
which he took the greatest pride, and he was most 
careful in providing his guests with proved "tiger- 
staunch" animals. These were oddly enough invari- 
ably lady-elephants, the males being apt to lose their 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 27 

heads in the excitement of meeting their hereditary- 
enemies, and consequently apt to run amok. 

My particular elephant, which I rode daily for five 
weeks, was an elderly and highly respectable female 
named "Chota Begum." Had she only happened to 
have been born without a tail, and with two legs in- 
stead of four, she would have worn silver-rimmed 
spectacles and a large cap with cherries in it; would 
have knitted stockings all day long and have taken 
a deep interest in the Church Missionary Society. 

I soon got on very friendly terms with "Chota 
Begum." She was inordinately fond of oranges, 
which, of course, were difficult to procure in the jun- 
gle, so I daily brought her a present of half-a-dozen 
of these delicacies, supplementing the gift at luncheon- 
time with a few bananas. Chota Begum was deeply 
touched by these attentions, and one morning my ma- 
hout informed me that she wished, out of gratitude, to 
lift me into the howdah with her trunk. I cannot 
conceive how he found this out, but I naturally was 
averse to wounding the elephant's feelings by refus- 
ing the proffered courtesy, though I should infinitely 
have preferred getting into the howdah in the ordi- 
nary manner. The mahout, after the mysterious man- 
ner of his kind, was giving his charge minute direc- 
tions to be very careful with me, when I suddenly 
felt myself seized by Chota Begum's trunk, lifted into 
the air, and held upside down at the extreme length 
of that member, for, it seemed to me, at least five 
minutes. Rupees and small change rained from my 
pockets to the ground, cigar case, cigarette case, 



28 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

matches and cartridge extractor streamed down to 
earth in clattering showers from their abiding places ; 
the blood rushed to my head till I was on the very 
verge of apoplexy, and still Chota Begum, remem- 
bering her instructions to be careful, held me up 
aloft, until slowly, very slowly indeed, she lowered 
me into the howdah, dizzy and stupid with blood to 
the head. The attention was well-meant, but it was 
distinctly not one to be repeated indefinitely. In 
my youth there was a popular song recounting the 
misfortunes of one Mr. Brown : 

"Old man Brown, upside down, 
With his legs sticking up in the air" ; 

but I never imagined that I should share his unpleas- 
ant experiences. 

I never enquired too minutely as to how the "kub- 
ber" of the whereabouts of a tiger was obtained, but 
I have a strong suspicion that unhappy goats played 
a part in it, and that they were tethered in different 
parts of the jungle, for, as we all know, "the bleat- 
ing of the kid excites the tiger." 

A tiger being thus located by his "kill," the long 
line of beating elephants, riderless except for their 
mahouts, goes crashing through the burnt-up jungle- 
growth, until a trumpeting from one of the elephants 
announces the neighbourhood of "stripes," for an ele- 
phant has an abnormally keen sense of smell. The 
various guns are posted on their elephants in any open 
spot where a good view of the beast can be obtained 
when he breaks cover. I have explained elsewhere 
how I personally always preferred an ordinary shot- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 29 

gun loaded with a lead ball, to a rifle for either tigers 
or bears. The reason being that both these animals 
are usually shot at very close quarters whilst they 
are moving rapidly. Time is lost in getting the sights 
of a rifle on to a swift-moving objective, and there 
is so little time to lose, for it is most inadvisable to 
wound a tiger without killing him; whereas with a 
shot-gun one simply raises it, looks down the barrels 
and fires as one would do at a rabbit, and a solid lead 
bullet has enormous stopping power. I took with 
me daily in the howdah one shot-gun loaded with ball, 
another with No. 5 shot for birds, an Express rifle, 
and one of the Maharajah's terrific 4-bore elephant- 
rifles; this latter 's charge was 14% drachms of black 
powder ; the kick seemed to break every bone in one's 
shoulder, and I was frightened to death every time 
that I fired it off. 

On that Assam shoot I was quite extraordinarily 
lucky, for on the very first day the beating elephants 
announced the presence of a tiger by trumpeting 
almost at once, and suddenly, with a roar, a great 
streak of orange and black leaped into the sunlight 
from the jungle straight in front of me. The tiger 
came straight for my elephant, who stood firm as a 
rock, and I waited with the smooth-bore till he got 
within twenty feet of me and I knew that I could not 
possibly miss him, and then fired at his shoulder. The 
tiger fell dead. This was a very easy shot, but it did 
me great service with my mahout. These men, perched 
as they are on the elephant's neck, carry their lives 
in their hand, for should the tiger be wounded only, 



30 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

he will certainly make a spring for the elephant's 
head, and then the mahout is a dead man. Incidentally 
the "gun" in the howdah will not fare much better 
in that case. The mahout, should he have but small 
confidence in his passenger's marksmanship, will make 
the elephant fidget so that it becomes impossible to fire, 

Two days later we were beating a patch of jungle, 
when, through the thick undergrowth, I could just 
see four legs, moving very, very slowly amongst the 
reeds, the body above them being invisible. "Bagh" 
(tiger) , whispered the mahout, turning round. I was 
so excited that I snatched up the heavy elephant-rifle 
instead of the Express, and fired just above those 
slow-slouching legs. The big rifle went off with a 
noise like an air-raid, and knocked me with mangled 
shoulder-blades into the seat of the howdah. I was 
sure that I had missed altogether, and thought no 
more about it, but when the beat came up half an hour 
later, a huge tiger was lying there stone dead. That, 
of course, was an absolute piece of luck, a mere fluke, 
as I had never even seen the brute. As soon as the 
Maharajah and his men had examined the big tiger's 
teeth they at once pronounced him a man-eater, and 
there was great rejoicing, for a man-eating tiger 
had been taking toll of the villagers in one of the jun- 
gle clearings. I believe that tigers only take to eat- 
ing men when they are growing old and their teeth be- 
gin to fail them, a man being easier to catch than a 
bullock or goat. The skins of these two tigers have 
lain on my drawing-room carpet for thirty years now. 

On our second day the Maharajah shot a leopard. 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 31 

He was only wounded, and I have never seen an ani- 
mal fight so fiercely or with such indomitable courage. 
Of course, the whole cat-tribe are very tenacious of 
life, but that leopard had five bullets in him, and still 
he roared and hissed and spat, though his life was ebb- 
ing from him fast. We must have worked round in 
a circle nearer to the camp, for whilst we were watch- 
ing the leopard's furious fight the strains of the Ma- 
harajah's orchestra practising "The Gondoliers," 
floated down-wind to us quite clearly. I remember 
it well, for as we dismounted to look at the dead beast 
the cornet solo, "Take a pair of sparkling eyes," be- 
gan. There was such a startling incongruity between 
an almost untrodden virgin jungle in Assam, with 
a dead leopard lying in the foreground, and that fa- 
miliar strain of Sullivan's, so beloved of amateur 
tenors, that it gave a curious sense of unreality to 
the whole scene. 

This admirable orchestra made the evenings very 
pleasant. We put on white ties and tail-coats every 
night for dinner in the open shamyandh, where the 
Maharajah provided us with an excellent European 
repast served on solid silver plates. As the endless 
resources of this wonderful camp included an ice- 
making machine, he also gave us iced champagne every 
evening. As an example of how thorough the Ma- 
harajah was in his arrangements, he had brought three 
of his malleeSy or native gardeners, with him, their 
sole function being to gather wild jungle-flowers 
daily, and to decorate the tables and tents with them. 

Neither the Maharajah nor his family ever touched 



32 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

any of the European food, though, as they were not 
Hindoos, but belonged to the Bramo-Somaj religion, 
there were no caste-laws to prevent their doing so. 
Half-way through dinner the servants brought in 
large square silver boxes, some of rice, others of va- 
rious curries : hot currie^, dry curries, Ceylon curries, 
and green vegetable curries; these constituted their 
dinner, and most excellent they were. 

I really must pay a tribute to the graceful and de- 
lightful Maharanee, who presided with such dignity 
and charm at these gatherings. I had first met the 
Maharanee in London, in 1887, at the festivities in 
connection with Queen Victoria's Jubilee. The Ma- 
haranee, the daughter of a very ancient Bengal fam- 
ily, was then quite young. She had only emerged 
"from behind the curtain," as natives of India say, 
for six months. In other words, she had just emanci- 
pated herself from the seclusion of the Zenana, where 
she had lived since her marriage. She had then very 
delicate features, and most lovely eyes, with exqui- 
sitely moulded hands and arms. Very wisely she had 
not adopted European fashions in their entirety, but 
had retained the becoming saree of gold or silver tis- 
sue or brocade, throwing the end of it over her head 
as a veil, and looking perfectly charming in it. Every- 
thing in England must have seemed strange to her, 
the climate, the habits, and the mode of living, and 
yet this little Princess behaved as though she had 
been used to it all her life, and still managed to retain 
the innate dignity of the high-caste native lady. 

As one travels through life certain pictures remain 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 33 

vividly clear-cut in the memory. The evenings in 
that shooting-camp are amongst these. I can still 
imagine myself strolling with an extremely comely 
lady along the stretches of natural lawn that crowned 
the bluff above the river, the gurgle and splashing of 
the stream loud in our ears as we looked over the 
unending expanse of jungle below us, vast and full 
of mystery under the brilliant moonlight of India. 
In India the moonlight is golden, not silvery as with 
us. The great grey sea of scrub, with an occasional 
prominent tree catching this golden light on its clear- 
cut outline, had something awe-inspiring about it, for 
here one was face to face with real Nature. A faint 
and distant roar was also a reminder that the jungle 
had its inhabitants, and through it all came the 
quaintly incongruous strains of the orchestra playing 
a selection from "The Mikado": 

"My object all sublime, I shall achieve in time, 
To make the punishment fit the crime, 
The punishment fit the crime." 

The moonlit jungle night-scene, and the familiar air 
with its London associations were such endless thou- 
sands of miles apart. 

On the floor of my drawing-room, in Westminster, 
the skin of a bear reposes close to those of two tigers. 
This is how he came there: We were at breakfast 
when kubber of a bear only two miles away was 
brought in. The Maharajah at once ordered the 
howdah-elephants round. Opposite me on the break- 
fast-table stood a large plate of buns, which the camp 
baker made most admirably. Ever since my earliest 



34 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

childhood I had gone on every possible occasion to 
the Zoological Gardens in Regent's Park, and was 
therefore in a position to know what was the favour- 
ite food of the ursine race. That they did not exist 
on buns in the jungle was due to a lack of oppor- 
tunity rather than to a lack of inclination, so I argued 
that the dainty would prove just as irresistible to a 
bear in the jungle as it did to his brethren in the big 
pit near the entrance to the Zoo, and ignoring the 
rather cheap gibes of the rest of the party, I provided 
myself with half-a-dozen buns, three of which I at- 
tached by long strings to the front of my howdah, 
where they swung about like an edible pawnbroker's 
sign. The bear was lying in a very small patch of 
bamboo, and broke cover at once. As I had antici- 
pated, the three swinging buns proved absolutely ir- 
resistible to him. He came straight up to me, I shot 
him with a smooth-bore, and he is most decorative in 
his present position, but it was all due to the buns. 
The Maharajah told me, much to my surprise, that 
far more natives were killed by bears than by tigers 
in that part of India. 

The jungle was very diversified: in places it con- 
sisted of flat tablelands of scrub, varied with broad 
open spaces broken by thick clumps ("topes" they 
are called by Anglo-Indians) of bamboo. In other 
parts there were rocky ravines covered with forest 
growth, and on the low ground far-stretching and 
evil-smelling swamps spread themselves, the home of 
the rhinoceros and water buffalo. 

I had no idea of an elephant's climbing powers. 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 35 

These huge beasts make their way quite easily up 
rocky ascents no horse could negotiate. In coming 
down steep declivities, the wise creatures extend their 
hind-legs, using them as. brakes. Cautious old Chota 
Begum would never ford any river without sounding 
the depth with her trunk at every step. On one occa- 
sion two of the Maharajah's fishermen were paddling 
native dug-outs down-stream as we approached a 
river. Chota Begum, who had never before seen a 
dug-out, took them for crocodiles, trumpeted loudly 
with alarm, and refused to enter the water until they 
were quite out of sight. The curious intelligence of 
the animal is seen when they are ordered to remove 
a tree which blocks the road. Chota Begum would 
place her right foot against the trunk and give a little 
tentative shove. Not satisfied with the leverage, she 
would shift her foot again and again until she had 
found the right spot, then, throwing her whole weight 
on to her foot, the tree would snap off like a wooden 
match. 

There was a great amount of bird-life in the jungle. 
It abounded in peacocks, and these birds are a glori- 
ous sight sailing down-wind through the sunlight 
with their tails streaming behind them, at a pace which 
would leave any pheasant standing. As peacocks 
are regarded as sacred by Hindoos, the Maharajah 
had particularly begged us not to shoot any. There 
were plenty of other birds, snipe, partridges, florican 
and jungle-cocks, the two latter greatly esteemed for 
their flesh. I shot a jungle-cock, and was quite dis- 
appointed at finding him a facsimile of our barn- 



36 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

door game-cock, for I had imagined that he would 
have the velvety black wing starred with cream-col- 
oured eyes, which we associate with the "jungle-cock 
wing" of salmon flies. The so-called "jungle-cock" 
in a "Jock Scott" fly is furnished by a bird found, 
I believe, only round Madras. An animal peculiar 
to this part of Assam is the pigmy hob, the smallest 
of the swine family. These little beasts, no larger 
than guinea-pigs, go about in droves of about fifty, 
and move through the grass with such incredible 
rapidity that the eye is unable to follow them. The 
elephants, oddly enough, are scared to death by the 
pigmy hogs, for the little creatures have tushes as 
sharp as razors, and gash the elephants' feet with them 
as they run past them. 

I think that we all regretted the Maharajah's keen- 
ness about water-buffalo and rhinos, for this entailed 
long days of plodding on elephants through steamy, 
fetid swamps, where the grass was twenty feet high 
and met over one's head, where the heat was intoler- 
able, without one breath of air, and the mosquitoes 
maddening. A day in the swamps entailed, too, a 
big dose of quinine at bedtime. Between ourselves, 
I was terrified at the prospect of having to fire off 
the heavy four-bore elephant-rifle. The "kick" of 
fourteen-and-a-half drachms of black-powder is tre- 
mendous, and one's shoulder ached for two hours 
afterwards, though I do not regret the "kick" in sur- 
veying the water-buffalo which has hung now in my 
hall for thirty years. I have only seen two wild rhi- 
noceroses in my life, and of the first one I had only 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 37 

a very brief glimpse. We were outside the swamp, 
when down a jungle-track came a charging rhinoc- 
eros, his head down and an evil look in his eye. One 
look was enough for Chota Begum. That most re- 
spectable of old ladies had quite evidently no love for 
rhinos. She lost her nerve completely, and ran away 
for two miles as hard as her ungainly limbs could lay 
leg to the ground. It is no joke to be on a runaway 
elephant maddened with fright, and it is extremely 
difficult to keep one's seat. The mahout and I hung 
on with both hands for dear life, the guns and rifles 
crashing together with a deafening clamour of iron- 
mongery, and I was most thankful that there were no 
trees anywhere near, for the terrified animal's first 
impulse would have been to knock off both howdah 
and mahout under the overhanging branch of a tree. 
When Chota Begum at length pulled up, she had to 
listen to some terrible home-truths about her ancestry 
from the mahout, who was bitterly disappointed in his' 
beloved charge. As to questions of lineage, and the 
morals of Chota Begum's immediate progenitors, I 
can only hope that the mahout exaggerated, for he 
certainly opened up appalling perspectives. Any old 
lady would have got scared at seeing so hideous a 
monster preparing to rip her open, and under the 
circumstances you and I would have run away just 
as fast as Chota Begum did. 

The only other wild rhinoceros I ever saw was on 
the very last day of our stay in Assam. We were 
returning home on elephants, when they began to 
trumpet loudly, as we approached a little dip. My 



38 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

nephew, General Sir Henry Streatfeild, called out 
to me to be ready, as there was probably a bear in 
the hollow. Next moment a rhinoceros charged out 
and made straight for his elephant. Sir Henry fired 
with a heavy four-bore rifle, and by an extraordinary 
piece of good luck hit the rhino in the one little spot 
where he is vulnerable, otherwise he must have been 
killed. The huge beast rolled over like a shot hare, 
stone-dead. 

One evening on our way back to camp, we thought 
that we would ride our elephants ourselves, and told 
the mahouts to get down. They had no fancy for 
walking two miles back to camp, and accordingly, in 
some mysterious manner of which they have the se- 
cret, gave their charges private but definite orders. 
I seated myself on Chota Begum's neck, put my feet 
in the string stirrups, and took the big arikus in my 
hand. The others did the same. I then ordered 
Chota Begum to go on, using the exact words the 
mahout did. Chota Begum commenced walking 
round and round in a small circle, and the eight other 
elephants all did the same. I tried cajoling her as 
the mahout did, and assured her that she was a 
"Pearl" and my "Heart's Delight." Chota Begum 
continued walking round and round in a small circle, 
as did all the other elephants. I changed my tactics, 
and made the most unmerited insinuations as to her 
mother's personal character, at the same time giving 
her a slight hint with the blunt end of the arikus. 
Chota Begum continued stolidly walking round and 
round. Meanwhile language most unsuited to a Sun- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 39 

day School arose from other members of the party, 
who were also careering round and round in small 
circles. Finally an Irish A.D.C. summed up the situ- 
ation by crying, "These mahouts have us beat," where- 
upon we capitulated, and a simultaneous shout went 
up, "Ohe, Mahout-log!" It is but seldom that one 
sees a native of India laughing, but those mahouts, 
when they emerged from the cover of some bamboos, 
were simply bent double with laughter. How they 
had conveyed their wishes to the elephants beats me 
still. 

The best of things must come to an end, and so did 
the Cooch Behar shoot. It is an experience that I 
would not have missed for anything, especially as I 
am now too old to hope to be able to repeat it. 

The Maharajah was good enough to invite me again 
the next year, 1892, but by that time I was seated 
in an editorial chair, and could not leave London. 
In the place of the brilliant sunshine of Assam, the 
grimy, murky London atmosphere; instead of the 
distant roars from the jungle, the low thunder of the 
big "machines" in the basement, as they began to re- 
volve, grinding out fresh reading-matter for the insa- 
tiable British public. 

The memories, however, remain. Blazing sunlight ; 
splendid sport; endless tracts of khaki-coloured jun- 
gle ; princely hospitality ; pleasant fellowship ; cheery 
company. 

What more can any one ask? 



CHAPTER II 

Mighty Kinchinjanga — The inconceivable splendours of a 
Himalayan sunrise — The last Indian telegraph-office — The 
irrepressible British Tommy — An improvised garden — An 
improvised Durbar Hall — A splendid ceremony — A native 
dinner — The disguised Europeans — Our shocking table- 
manners — Incidents — Two impersonations; one successful, 
the other reverse — I come off badly — Indian jugglers — The 
rope-trick — The juggler, the rope, and the boy — An in- 
explicable incident — A performing cobra scores a success — 
Ceylon "Devil Dancers" — Their performance — The Temple 
of the Tooth — The uncovering of the Tooth — Details con- 
cerning — An abominable libel — Tea and coffee — Peradeniya 
Gardens — The upas tree of Java — Colombo an Eastern 
Clapham Junction — The French lady and the savages — The 
small Bermudian and the inhabitants of England. 

During our early morning walks through the jungle- 
tracts of Assam, on clear days we occasionally 
caught a brief glimpse of a glittering white cone on 
the horizon. This was mighty Kinchinjanga, the 
second highest mountain in the world, distant then 
from us I should be afraid to say how many miles. 

To see Kinchinjanga to perfection, one must go 
to Darjeeling. What a godsend this cool hill-station 
is to Calcutta, for in twenty hours the par-boiled 
Europeans by the Hooghly can find themselves in a 
temperature like that of an English April. At Silli- 
guri, where the East Bengal Railway ends, some hu- 
morist has erected, close to the station, a sign-post 
inscribed "To Lhassa 359 miles." The sign-post has 
omitted to state that this entails an ascent of 16,500 

40 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 41 

feet. The Darjeeling-Himalayan Railway, an in- 
trepid little mountain-climber, looks as though it had 
come out of a toy-shop, for the gauge is only two feet, 
and the diminutive engines and carriages could almost 
be pulled about with a string. As the little train 
pants its leisurely way up 6000 feet, it is worth while 
noticing how the type of the country people changes. 
The brown-skinned Aryan type of the plains is soon 
replaced by the yellow, flat-faced Mongolian type of 
the hills, and the women actually have a tinge of red 
in their cheeks. 

The first time that I was at Darjeeling it was 
veiled in perpetual mists; on the last occasion, to 
compensate for this, there were ten days of continual 
clear weather. Then it is that it is worth while getting 
up at 5.30 a.m. and going down into a frost-nipped 
garden, there to wait patiently in the dark. In the 
eastern sky there is that faintest of jade-green glim- 
mers, known as the "false dawn"; below it the deep 
valleys are still wrapped in dark purple shadows, 
when quite suddenly Homer's "rosy-fingered dawn," 
po8o8axrv\os 'Ho>s, (was ever more beautiful epithet 
coined?) lays one shy, tentative finger-tip of blaz- 
ing, flaming crimson on a vast unseen bulk, towering 
up 28,000 feet into the air. Then quickly comes a 
second flaming finger-tip, and a third, until you are 
fronting a colossal pyramid of the most intensely 
vivid rose-colour imaginable. It is a glorious sight! 
Suddenly, in one minute, the crimson splendour is re- 
placed by the most dazzling, intense white, and as 
much as the eye can grasp of the two-thousand-mile- 



42 HERE, THE^E AND EVERYWHERE 

long mountain-rampart springs into light, peak after 
peak, blazing with white radiance, whilst the world be- 
low is still slumbering in the half -shadows, and the 
valleys are filled with purple darkness. I do not be- 
lieve that there is any more splendidly sublime sight 
to be seen in the whole world. For a while the eternal 
snows, unchanging in their calm majesty, dominate 
the puny world below, and then, because perhaps it 
would not be good to gaze for long on so magnificent 
a spectacle, the mists fall and the whole scene is blot- 
ted out, leaving in the memory a revelation of un- 
speakable grandeur. I saw this sunrise daily for a 
week, and its glories seemed greater every day. For 
some reason that I cannot explain it always recalled 
to me a passage in Job xxxviii, "When the morning 
stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted 
for joy." 

No one has ever yet succeeded in scaling Kinchin- 
janga, and I do not suppose that any one ever will. 

Darjeeling itself, in spite of its magnificent sur- 
roundings, looks like a portion of a transplanted Lon- 
don suburb, but there is a certain piquancy in reflect- 
ing that it is only fifteen miles from the borders of 
Tibet. The trim, smug villas of Dalhousie and Auck- 
land Roads may have electric light, and neat gardens 
full of primroses; fifteen miles away civilisation, as 
we understand the term, ends. There are neither 
roads, post-offices, telegraphs nor policemen; these 
tidy commonplace "Belle Vues," "Claremonts" and 
"Montpeliers" are on the very threshold of the mys- 
terious Forbidden Land. An Army doctor told me 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 43 

that he had been up at the last frontier telegraph- 
office of India. It is well above the line of snows, and 
one would imagine it a terrible place of captivity for 
the Sergeant and four Privates (all white men) in 
charge of it, but the spirits of the British Tommy are 
unquenchable. The men had amused themselves by 
painting notices, and the perpetual snow round the 
telegraph-office was dotted with boards: "this way to 
the swings and boats" ; "the public are requested not 
to walk on the newly sown grass"; "try our famous 
shilling teas"; "all season-tickets must be shown at 
the barrier," and many more like them. It takes a 
great deal to depress the average British soldier. 

Natives of India are extraordinarily good at 
"camouflaging" improvised surroundings, for they 
have been used to doing it for centuries. I was once 
talking to Lord Kitchener at his official house in Fort 
William, Calcutta, when he asked me to come and 
have a look at the garden. He informed me that he 
was giving a garden-party to fifteen hundred guests 
in three days' time, and wondered whether the space 
were sufficient for it. I told him that I was certain 
that it was not, and that I doubted whether half that 
number could get in. "Very well," said Lord Kitch- 
ener, "I shall have the whole of the Fort ditch 
turned into a garden to-morrow." Next day he had 
eight hundred coolies at work. They levelled the 
rough sand, marked out with pegs walks of pounded 
bricks, which they flattened, sowed the sand with 
mustard and cress and watered it abundantly to coun- 
terfeit lawns, and finally brought cartloads of grow- 



44 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

ing flowers, shrubs and palms, which they "plunged" 
in the mustard-and-cress lawns, and in thirty-six 
hours there was a garden apparently established for 
years. It is true that the mustard-and-cress lawns 
did not bear close inspection, but, on the other hand, 
you could eat them, which you cannot do with ours. 
Lord Kitchener was fond of saying that he had never 
been intended for a soldier, but for an architect and 
house-decorator. Certainly the additions made to his 
official house, which were all carried out from his own 
designs, were very effective and in excellent taste. 

In a country like India, where so much takes place 
out of doors, wonderful effects can be produced, as 
Lord Kitchener said, with some rupees, some native 
boys, and a good many yards of insulated wire. The 
boys are sent climbing up the trees; they drop long 
pieces of twine to which the electric wires are tied; 
they haul them up, and proceed to wire the trees and 
to fix coloured bulbs up to their very tops. Night 
comes ; a switch is pressed, and every tree in the gar- 
den is a blaze of ruby, sapphire, or emerald, with the 
most admirable result. 

Lord Minto was holding a large Investiture of the 
"Star of India" the last time that I was in Calcutta. 
He wished to have at least two thousand people pres- 
ent, and large as are the rooms at Government House, 
not one of them would contain anything like that 
number, so Lord Minto had an immense canvas Dur- 
bar Hall constructed. Here again the useful factor 
comes in of knowing to a day when the earliest pos- 
sible shower of rain is due. The tent, a huge flat- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 45 

topped "Shamyana," was, when finished, roughly 
paved with bricks, over which were spread priceless 
Persian and Indian carpets from the "Tosho Khana" 
or Treasury. The sides and roof were stretched at 
one end with sulphur-coloured Indian silk, at the 
other with pale blue silk, the yellow silk with a two- 
foot border of silver tinsel, the blue edged with gold 
tinsel. Cunning craftsmen from Agra fashioned 
"camouflage" doorways and columns of plaster, col- 
oured and gilt in the style of the arabesques in the 
Alhambra, and the thing was done ; almost literally, 

"Out of the earth a fabric huge 
Rose like an exhalation," 

and it would be impossible to imagine a more splen- 
did setting for a great pageant. Some one on the 
Viceroy's staff must have had a great gift for stage- 
management, for every detail had been carefully 
thought out. The scarlet and gold of the Troopers 
of the Body-guard, standing motionless as brown 
statues, the mace-men with their gilt standards, the 
entry of the Rajahs, all in full gala costume, with 
half the amount of our pre-war National Debt hang- 
ing round their necks in the shape of diamonds and of 
uncut rubies and emeralds, the Knights of the Star 
of India in their pale-blue mantles, the Viceroy seated 
on his silver-gilt throne at the top of a flight of steps, 
on which all the Durbar carpets of woven gold were 
displayed, made, under the blaze of electric light, an 
amazingly gorgeous spectacle only possible in the 
East, and it would be difficult for any European to 



46 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

have equalled the immense dignity of the Native 
Princes. 

Custom forbids the Viceroy's wife to dine out, but 
it had been long agreed between Lady Lansdowne 
and the Maharanee of Cooch Behar, that should she 
ever return to India as a private person she should 
come to a dinner served native fashion, "on the floor." 
My sister having returned to Calcutta for her son's 
marriage in 1909, the Maharanee reminded her of 
this promise. Upon arriving at the house, Lady 
Lansdowne and two other European ladies were con- 
ducted up-stairs to be arrayed in native garb, whilst 
the Maharajah's sons with great glee took charge of 
myself, of yet another nephew of mine, and of the 
Viceroy's head aide-de-camp. Although it can hardly 
be taken as a compliment, truth compels me to confess 
that the young Cooch Behars considered my figure 
reminiscent of that of a Bengalee gentleman. With 
some slight shock to my modesty, I was persuaded to 
discard my trousers, being draped in their place with 
over thirty yards of white muslin, wound round and 
round, and in and out of my lower limbs. A dark 
blue silk tunic, and a flat turban completed my trans- 
formation into a Bengalee country squire, or his 
equivalent. My nephew, being very slight and tall, 
was at once turned into a Sikh, with skin-tight trou- 
sers, a very high turban, and the tightest of cloth-of- 
gold tunics, whilst the other young man, a good-look- 
ing dark young fellow, became a Rajput prince, and 
shimmered with silver brocades. I must own that 
European ladies do not show up to advantage in the 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 47 

native sare. Their colouring looks all wrong, and 
they have not the knack of balancing their unaccus- 
tomed draperies. Our ladies all looked as though 
they were terrified that their voluminous folds would 
suddenly slip off (which, indeed, they owned was the 
case) , leaving them most indelicately lightly clad. One 
could not help observing the contrast between the ner- 
vousness of the three European ladies, draped re- 
spectively in white and gold, pink and silver, and blue 
and gold, and the grace with which the Maharanee, 
with the ease of long practice, wore her becoming 
sare of brown and cloth of gold. As it had been agreed 
that strict native fashion was to be observed, we were 
all shoeless. The Maharanee, laughing like a child, 
sprinkled us with rose-water, and threw garlands of 
flowers and wreaths of tinsel round our necks. I felt 
like a walking Christmas-tree as we went down to 
dinner. 

Round a large, empty, marble-paved room, twelve 
little red-silk beds were disposed, one for each guest. 
In front of each bed stood an assemblage of some 
thirty silver bowls, big and little, all grouped round 
a large silver platter, piled a foot high with a pyramid 
of rice. This was the entire dinner, and there were, 
of course, neither knives nor forks. No one who has 
not tried it can have any idea of the difficulty of plung- 
ing the right hand into a pile of rice, of attempting to 
form a ball of it, and then dipping it at haphazard 
into one of the silver bowls of mysterious prepara- 
tions. Very little of my rice ever reached my mouth, 
for it insisted on spreading itself greasily over the 



48 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

marble floor, and I was gratified at noting that the 
European ladies managed no better than I did. Added 
to which, half -lying, half -reclining on the little silk 
beds, the unaccustomed European gets attacked by- 
violent cramps; one is also conscious of the presence 
of bones in the most unexpected portions of one's 
anatomy, and these bones begin aching furiously in 
the novel position. Some native dishes are excellent; 
others must certainly be acquired tastes. For instance, 
after a long course of apprenticeship one might be 
in a position to appreciate snipe stewed in rose-water, 
and I am cqnvinced that asafoetida as a dressing to 
chicken must be delicious to those trained to it from 
their infancy. A quaint sweet, compounded of cocoa- 
nut cream and rose-water, and gilded all over with 
gold-leaf, lingers in my memory. As hands naturally* 
get greasy, eating in this novel fashion, two servants 
were constantly ready with a silver basin and a long- 
necked silver ewer, with which to pour water over 
soiled hands. This basin and ewer delighted me, for 
in shape they were exactly like the ones that "the 
little captive maid" was offering to Naaman's wife 
in a picture which hung in my nursery as a child. I 
liked watching the graceful play of the wrists and 
arms of the Maharanee and her daughters as they 
conveyed food to their mouths; it was a contrast to 
the clumsy, ineffectual efforts of the Europeans. 

The aide-de-camp looked so wonderfully natural 
as a Rajput prince (and that, too, without any brown 
make-up) that we wished him to dress-up in the same 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 49 

clothes next day and to go and write his name on the 
Viceroy, to see if he could avoid detection. 

These sorts of impersonations have to be done very 
thoroughly if they are to succeed. I have recounted 
elsewhere how my father won the rowing champion- 
ship of the Mediterranean with his four-oar, in 1866. 
The course being such a severe one, his crew had to 
train very rigorously. It occurred to my father, who 
was extremely fond of boxing himself, that a little 
daily practice with the gloves might with advantage 
form part of the training. He accordingly had four 
pairs of boxing-gloves sent out from England, and he 
and the crew had daily bouts in our coach-house. The 
Due de Vallombrosa was a great friend of my fam- 
ily's, and used to watch this boxing with immense 
interest. The Due was a huge man, very powerfully 
built, but had had no experience with the gloves. The 
present Sir David Erskine was the youngest member 
of the crew, and was very slender and light built, and 
it struck my father one day that it would be interest- 
ing to see this comparative stripling put on the gloves 
with the great burly Frenchman. Sir David realised 
that his only chance with his huge brawny opponent 
was to tire him out, for should this formidable Colos- 
sus once get home on him, he would be done. He 
made great play with his foot-work, skipping round 
his big opponent and pommelling every inch of his 
anatomy that he could reach, and successfully dodg- 
ing the smashing blows that his slow-moving antago- 
nist tried to deal him. Suddenly, and quite unexpect- 
edly, the big Frenchman collapsed. The Due de 



50 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

Vallombrosa took his defeat in the most sportsman- 
like fashion, but he rernembered who had originally 
proposed the match. 

A week later my father was riding home from a pic- 
nic with some ladies. As their horses were tired, he 
proposed that they should save a long round by riding 
along the railway line and over a railway bridge. The 
Due de Vallombrosa heard of this. Some few nights 
later two gendarmes in full uniform appeared at our 
villa after dark, and the bigger of the two demanded 
in the most peremptory fashion to be taken in to my 
father at once, leaving the younger one to watch the 
front door, where we could all see him marching up 
and down. When ushered in to my father, the gen- 
darme, a huge, fiercely bearded man, adopted the 
most truculent manner. It had come to the knowl- 
edge of the police, he said, that my father had ridden 
on horse-back over a railway bridge, and along the 
line. Did he admit it? My father at once owned that 
he had done so, but pleaded ignorance, should he 
have broken any rule. Ignorance was no excuse, re- 
torted the gendarme, even foreigners were supposed 
to know the law. The big bearded gendarme, whose 
tone became more hectoring and bullying every mo- 
ment, went on to say that my father had broken 
Article 382 of the French Penal Code, a very serious 
offence indeed, punishable with from three to six 
months' imprisonment. My father smiled, and draw- 
ing out his pocket-book, said that he imagined that 
the offence could be compounded. The stern officer 
of the law grew absolutely furious; did my father 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 51 

suppose that a French gendarme could be bribed into 
forgetting his duty? He would now take my father 
to the lock-up to pass the night there until the proces 
verbal should be drawn up, and though he regretted 
it, his orders in similar cases were always to handcuff 
his prisoners. The family, who had gathered together 
on hearing the loud altercation, were struck with con- 
sternation. The idea of our parent being led in fet- 
ters through a French town, and then flung into a 
French dungeon, was so unspeakably painful to us 
that we were nearly throwing ourselves at the big 
policeman's feet to implore him to spare our progeni- 
tor, when the burly gendarme suddenly pulled off his 
false beard, revealing the extensive but familiar 
features of the Due de Vallombrosa. The second 
slight-built gendarme at the door, proved to be Gen- 
eral Sir George Higginson, most admirably made up. 
My father insisted on the two gendarmes dining with 
us. As our servants were not in the secret, the pres- 
ence of two French policemen in uniform at the family 
dinner-table must have rather surprised them. 

I must plead guilty myself to another attempt at 
impersonation. During my father's second term of 
office as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, my mother had 
a severe nervous breakdown, due to the unexpected 
death of a very favourite sister of mine. One of the 
principal duties of a Lord Lieutenant is (or rather 
was) to entertain ceaselessly, and private mourning 
was not supposed to interfere with this all-important 
task. So, after a respite of four months, the endless 
round of dinners, dances, and balls recommenced, but 



52 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

my mother could not forget her loss, and had no heart 
for any festivities, nor did she wish to meet strangers. 
My father took a house for her on the sea-coast near 
Dublin, to which she retired, and my only remaining 
unmarried sister took, with Queen Victoria's per- 
mission, my mother's place as Lady Lieutenant for 
two years. 

A brother cannot be an impartial judge of his 
sister's personal appearance, but I have always under- 
stood that my seven sisters were regarded by most 
people as ranking only second to the peerless Mon- 
crieffe sisters as regards beauty. Certainly I thought 
this particular sister, the late Lady Winterton, sur- 
passed the others in outward appearance, for she had 
beautiful and very refined features, and the most ex- 
quisite skin and complexion. I thought her a most 
lovely apparition when covered with my mother's 
jewels. 

In those days (how far off they seem!) one of the 
great events of the Dublin Season was the Gala-night 
at the theatre, or "Command Night" as it was called, 
when all the men wore uniform or Court dress, and 
the ladies their very best clothes. When the Lord 
and Lady Lieutenant entered the State box, attended 
by the various members of their Household, the audi- 
ence stood up, the band playing "God Save the 
Queen!" (yes, that was in Dublin in 1875!), and the 
Viceregal pair then bowed their acknowledgments 
to the house from their box. 

On the "Command Night" in 1875 my sister took 
my mother's place, and, as I have already said, dia- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 53 

monds were exceedingly becoming to her. Accord- 
ing to custom, she went to the front of the box, and 
made a low sweeping curtsey to the audience. Ten 
days later she received a letter from an unknown cor- 
respondent, together with a photograph of a portly 
elderly man with large grey whiskers. He had been 
taken in an unusual position, for he was making a low 
bow and holding his high hat at arm's length from 
him. The writer explained that on the Command 
Night my sister had bowed to him in the most marked 
way. So taken aback was he, that he had not ac- 
knowledged it. He, therefore, to make amends, had 
had himself photographed in an attitude of perpetual 
salutation. Other letters rained in on my sister from 
the eccentric individual, and he sent her almost weekly 
fresh presentments of his unprepossessing exterior, 
but always in a bowing attitude. We made, natu- 
rally, inquiries about this person, and found that he 
was an elderly widower, a hatter by trade, who had 
retired from business after making a considerable for- 
tune, and was living in Rathmines, a South Dublin 
suburb. The hatter was undoubtedly mad, a mental 
infirmity for which there is, of course, ample precedent 
in the case of gentlemen of his profession. 

On one occasion, when my sister was leaving for 
England, the hatter, having purchased a number of 
fireworks, chartered a rowing-boat, and as the mail- 
steamer cleared the Kingstown pier-heads, a bouquet 
of rockets and Roman candles coruscated before the 
eyes of the astonished passengers. I was then eigh- 
teen, and as none of us had set eyes on the hatter, it 



54 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

occurred to me that it would be rather fun to imper- 
sonate him, so, taking a photograph with me as guide, 
I got his bald grey head and long grey whiskers accu- 
rately copied by a Dublin theatrical wig-maker. It 
would have been difficult to carry out my idea at the 
Viceregal Lodge, for in the hall there, in addition to 
the regular hall-porter, there was always a constable 
in uniform and a plain-clothes man on duty, to pre- 
vent the entry of unauthorised persons, so I waited 
until we had moved to Baron's Court. Here I made 
careful preparations, and arranged to dress and make- 
up at the house of the Head-Keeper, a great ally of 
mine. I was met here by a hack-car ordered from 
the neighbouring town, and drove up to the front door 
armed with a nosegay the size of a cart-wheel, com- 
posed of dahlias, hollyhocks and sunflowers. I gave 
the hatter's name at the door, and was ushered by the 
unsuspecting footman into a library, where I waited 
an interminable time with my gigantic bouquet in 
my hand. At length the door opened, but instead of 
my sister, as I had anticipated, it admitted my father, 
and my father had a hunting-crop in his hand, and to 
the crop was attached a heavy thong. His first words 
left me in no doubt as to his attitude. "So, sir," he 
thundered, "you are the individual who has had the 
impertinence to pester my daughter with your atten- 
tions. I am going to give you, sir, a lesson that you 
will remember to the end of your life," and the crop 
was lifted. Fortunately the room was crowded with 
furniture, so, crouching between tables, and dodging 
behind sofas, I was able to elude the thong until I had 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 55 

tugged my wig off. The spirit-gum manfactured in 
those days must have been vastly superior to that made 
now, for nothing would induce my whiskers to part 
company with my face. Yelling out my identity, in 
spite of the hatter's tactlessly adhesive whiskers, I 
made one bolt for the open window, having success- 
fully evaded the whirling crop every time, but it was 
a lamentably tame ending to a carefully planned 
drama. 

Remembering these family incidents, we decided 
that it would be as well to abandon the idea of a visit 
to Government House by a distinguished Rajput 
nobleman. 

I may possibly have been unfortunate in my per- 
sonal experiences of Indian jugglers, but I have 
never seen them perform any trick that was difficult 
of explanation. For instance, the greatly over-rated 
Mango trick, as I have seen it, was an almost child- 
ish performance. Having made his heap of sand, in- 
serted the mango-stone, and watered it, the juggler 
covered it with a large basket, and put his hands under 
the basket. He did this between each stage of the 
growth of the tree. The plants in their various 
stages of growth were, of course, twisted round the 
inside of the basket, and he merely subsituted one 
for another. 

Colonel Barnard, at one time Chief of Police in 
Calcutta, told me a most curious story. We have all 
heard of the Indian "rope-trick," but none of us have 
met a person who actually saw it with his own eyes : 
the story never reaches us at first-hand, but always 



56 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

at second- or third-hand, exactly like the accounts one 
heard from credulous people in 1914 of the passage 
of the 75,000 Russian soldiers through England. No 
one had actually seen them, but every one knew some- 
body else whose wife's cousin had actually conversed 
with these mysterious Muscovites, or had seen trains 
with closely veiled windows rushing at dead of night 
towards London, crammed to overflowing with Rus- 
sian warriors. 

In the same way Colonel Barnard had never met 
an eye-witness of the rope-trick, but his policemen had 
received orders to report to him the arrival in Calcutta 
of any juggler professing to do it. At length one of 
the police informed him that a man able to perform 
the trick had reached Calcutta. He would show it on 
one condition: that Colonel Barnard should be accom- 
panied by one friend only. The Colonel took with him 
one of his English subordinates ; he also took with him 
his Kodak, into which he had inserted a new roll of 
films. They arrived at a poor house in the native 
quarter, where they were ushered into a small court- 
yard thick with the dense smoke arising from two 
braziers burning mysterious compounds. The jug- 
gler, naked except for his loin-cloth, appeared and 
commenced salaaming profoundly, continuing his 
exaggerated salaams for some little while. Eventu- 
ally he produced a long coil of rope. To Colonel 
Barnard's inexpressible surprise, the rope began 
paying away, as sailors would say, out of the juggler's 
hand of its own accord, and went straight up into the 
air. Colonel Barnard kodaked it. It went up and up, 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 57 

till their eyes could no longer follow it. Colonel Bar- 
nard kodaked it again. Then a small boy, standing 
by the juggler, commenced climbing up this rope, 
suspended to nothing, supported by nothing. He was 
kodaked. The boy went up and up, till he disap- 
peared from view. The smoke from the herbs smoul- 
dering in the braziers seemed almost to blot out the 
courtyard from view. The juggler, professing him- 
self angry with the boy for his dilatoriness, started 
in pursuit of him up this rope, hanging on nothing. 
He was kodaked, too. Finally the man descended 
the rope, and wiped a blood-stained knife, explain- 
ing that he had killed the boy for disobeying his or- 
ders. He then pulled the rope down and coiled it 
up, and suddenly the boy reappeared, and together 
with his master, began salaaming profoundly. The 
trick was over. 

The two Europeans returned home absolutely mys- 
tified. With their own eyes they had seen the impos- 
sible, the incredible. Then Colonel Barnard went 
into his dark room and developed his negatives, with 
an astounding result. Neither the juggler ', nor the 
boy-; nor the rope had moved at all. The photographs 
of the ascending rope, of the boy climbing it, and of 
the man following him, were simply blanks, showing 
the details of the courtyard and nothing else. Noth- 
ing whatever had happened, but how, in the name of 
all that is wonderful had the impression been con- 
veyed to two hard-headed, matter-of-fact English- 
men? Possibly the braziers contained cunning prepa- 
rations of hemp or opium, unknown to European 



58 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

science, or may have been burning some more subtle 
brain-stealer ; possibly the deep salaams of the juggler 
masked hypnotic passes, but somehow he had forced 
two Europeans to see what he wished them to see. 

On one occasion in Colombo, in Ceylon, there was 
an unrehearsed episode in a juggler's performance. 
I was seated on the verandah of the Grand Oriental 
Hotel which was crowded with French passengers 
from an outward-bound Messageries boat which had 
arrived that morning. A snake-charmer was showing 
off his tricks and reaping a rich harvest. The juggler 
went round with his collecting bowl, leaving his per- 
forming cobras in their basket. One cobra, probably 
devoid of the artistic temperament, or finding stage- 
life uncongenial to him, hungered for freedom, and, 
leaving his basket, glided swiftly on to the crowded 
verandah. He certainly occupied the middle of the 
stage at that moment and had the "spot-light" full on 
him, for every eye was riveted on the snake, and never 
was such a scene of consternation witnessed. Every 
one jumped on to the tables, women fainted and 
screamed, and the Frenchmen, for some unknown rea- 
son, all drew their revolvers. It turned out after- 
wards that the performing cobras had all had their 
poison-fangs drawn, and were consequently harmless. 

Its inhabitants declare that Ceylon is the most beau- 
tiful island in the world. Those who have seen Ja- 
maica will, I think, dispute this claim, though Kandy, 
nestling round its pretty little lake, and surrounded 
by low hills, is one of the loveliest spots imaginable. 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 59 

It is also the most snake-infested spot I ever set 
foot in. 

The Colonial Secretary, Sir Hugh Clifford, whom 
I had previously met in Trinidad, had succeeded with 
some difficulty in persuading a band of "Devil Dan- 
cers" to leave their jungle fastnesses, and to give an 
exhibition of their uncanny dances in his garden ; for, 
as a rule, these people dislike any Europeans seeing 
them engaged in their mysterious rites. The Colonial 
Secretary's dining-room was as picturesque in its 
setting as any stage scene. The room was surrounded 
with open arches, through which peeped the blue- 
velvet night sky and dim silhouettes of unfamiliar 
tropical growths; in the place of electric or mechani- 
cal punkahs, a tall red-and-gold clad Cingalee stood 
behind every guest waving continuously a long- 
handled, painted palm-leaf fan. The simultaneous 
rhythmic motion of the fans recalled the temple scene 
at the end of the first Act of A'ida. We found the 
"Devil Dancers" grouped in the garden, some thirty 
in number. The men were all short and very dark- 
skinned; they wore a species of kilt made of narrow 
strips of some white metal, which clashed furiously 
when they moved. Their legs and chests were naked 
except for festoons of white shells worn necklace- 
wise. On their heads they had curious helmets of 
white metal, branching into antlers, and these head- 
dresses were covered with loose, jangling, metallic 
strips. The men had their faces, limbs, and bodies 
painted in white arabesques, which, against the dark 
skins, effectually destroyed any likeness to human 



60 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

beings. It would be difficult to conceive of anything 
more uncanny and less human than the appearance 
of these Devil Dancers as they stood against a back- 
ground of palms in the black night, their painted faces 
lit up by the flickering glare of smoky torches. As 
soon as the raucous horns blared out and the tom- 
toms began throbbing in their maddening, syncopated 
rhythm, the pandemonium that ensued, when thirty 
men, whirling themselves in circles with a prodigious 
clatter of metals, began shrieking like devils possessed, 
as they leaped into the air, was quite sufficient to ac- 
count for the terror of the Cingalee servants, who ran 
and hid themselves, convinced that they were face to 
face with real demons escaped from the Pit. 

Like all Oriental performances it was far too long. 
The dancers shrieked and whirled themselves into a 
state of hysteria, and would have continued dancing 
all night, had they not been summarily dismissed. As 
far as I could make out, this was less of an attempt 
to propitiate local devils than an endeavour to frighten 
them away by sheer terror. It was unquestionably 
a horribly uncanny performance, what with the white 
streaked faces and limbs, and the clang of the metal 
dresses; the surroundings, too, added to the weird, 
unearthly effect, the dark moonless night, the dim 
masses of forest closing in on the garden, and the un- 
certain flare of the resinous torches. 

Amongst others invited to see the Devil Dancers 
was a French traveller, a M. Des Etangs, a singu- 
larly cultivated man, who had just made a tour of all 
the French possessions in India. M. Des Etangs was 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 61 

full of curiosity about the so-called "Sacred Tooth" 
of Buddha, which is enshrined in the "Temple of the 
Tooth," and makes Kandy a peculiarly sacred place 
to the Buddhist world. 

The temple, a small but very picturesque building, 
overhangs the lake, and is surrounded by a moat, full 
of the fattest carp and tortoises I ever saw. Every 
pilgrim to the shrine throws rice to these carp, and 
the unfortunate fish have grown to such aldermanic 
amplitude of outline that they can only just waddle, 
rather than swim, through the water. 

The Buddhist community must be of a most accom- 
modating temperament. The original tooth of Bud- 
dha was brought to Ceylon in a.d. 411. It was cap- 
tured about 1315 and taken to India, but was even- 
tually restored to Kandy. The Portuguese captured 
it again in 1560, burnt it, and ground it to powder, 
but the resourceful Vikrama Bahu at once manufac- 
tured a new tooth out of a piece of ivory, and the 
Buddhists readily accepted this false tooth as a worthy 
successor to the real one, extended the same veneration 
to it as they did to its predecessor, and, more impor- 
tant than all, increased rather than diminished their 
offerings to the "Temple of the Tooth." 

M. Des Etangs had the whole history of the tooth 
at his fingers' end, and Sir Hugh Clifford, who as 
Colonial Secretary was the official protector of the 
tooth, very kindly offered to have it uncovered for us 
in two days' time. He added that the priests were 
by no means averse to receiving such an official order, 
for they would telegraph the news all over the island, 



62 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

and thousands of pilgrims would arrive to view the 
exposed tooth, each one, of course, leaving an offer- 
ing, to the great benefit of the temple. 

Sir Hugh invited M. Des Etangs, the late General 
Oliphant and myself to be present at the uncovering, 
which had to take place at seven in the morning, in 
order to afford a sufficiently long day for the exposi- 
tion. He implored us all, in view of the immense 
veneration with which the Buddhists regarded the 
ceremony of the uncovering, to keep perfectly serious, 
and to adopt a becoming attitude of respect, and he 
begged us all to give a slight bow when the Buddhists 
made their prostrations. 

Accordingly, two days later at 7 a.m., M. Des 
Etangs, General Oliphant and I found ourselves in 
a lower room of the temple, the actual sanctuary of 
the tooth itself, into which Christians are not generally 
admitted. We were, of course, the only Europeans 
present. 

Never have I felt anything like the heat of that 
sanctuary. We dripped and poured with perspira- 
tion. The room was entirely lined with copper, walls 
and roof alike, and the closed shutters were also cop- 
per-sheathed. Every scrap of light and air was ex- 
cluded; there must have been at least two hundred 
candles alight, the place was thick with incense and 
heavy with the overpowering scent of the frangipani, 
or "temple-flower" as it is called in Ceylon, which lay 
in piled white heaps on silver dishes all round the 
room. The place was crowded with priests and lead- 
ing Buddhists, and we Europeans panted and gasped 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 63 

for air in that stifling, over-scented atmosphere. Pres- 
ently the Hereditary Keeper of the Tooth, who was 
not a priest but the lineal descendant of the old Kings 
of Kandy, knelt down and recited a long prayer. At 
its conclusion eight men staggered across. the room, 
bearing a vast bell-shaped shrine of copper about 
seven feet high. This was the outer case of the tooth. 
The Hereditary Keeper produced an archaic key, and 
the outer case was unlocked. The eight men shuffled 
off with their heavy burden, and the next covering, a 
much smaller, bell-shaped case of gold, stood revealed. 
All the natives present prostrated themselves, and 
we, in accordance with our orders, bowed our heads. 
This was repeated six times, the cases growing richer 
and more heavily jewelled as we approached the final 
one. The seventh case was composed entirely of cut 
rubies and diamonds, a shimmering and beautiful 
piece of work, presented by the Buddhists of Bur- 
mah, but made, oddly enough, in Bond Street, W.l. 

When opened, this disclosed the largest emerald 
known, carved into the shape of a Buddha, and this 
emerald Buddha held the tooth in his hand. After 
prolonged prostrations, the Hereditary Keeper took 
a lotus-flower, beautifully fashioned out of pure gold 
without alloy, and placed the tooth in it, on a little 
altar heaped with frangipani flowers. The uncov- 
ering was over; we three Europeans left the room in 
a half -fainting condition, gasping for air, suffocated 
with the terrific heat, and stifled with the heavy per- 
fumes. 

The octagonal tower over the lake, familiar to all 



64 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

visitors to Kandy, contains the finest Buddhist theo- 
logical library in the world. The books are all in 
manuscript, each one encased in a lacquer box, though 
the bookcases themselves containing these treasures 
were supplied by a well-known firm in the Tottenham 
Court Road. 

A singularly intelligent young priest, speaking 
English perfectly, showed me the most exquisitely il- 
luminated old Chinese manuscripts, as well as treat- 
ises in ten other Oriental languages, which only made 
me deplore my ignorance, since I was unable to read 
a word of any of them. The illuminations, though, 
struck me as fully equal to the finest fourteenth-cen- 
tury European work in their extreme minuteness and 
wonderful delicacy of detail. The young priest, whom 
I should suspect of being what is termed in ecclesias- 
tical circles "a spike," was evidently very familiar 
with the Liturgy of the Church of England, but it 
came with somewhat of a shock to hear him apply to 
Buddha terms which we are accustomed to use in a 
different connection. 

The material prosperity of Ceylon is due to tea and 
rubber, and the admirable Public Works of the col- 
ony, roads, bridges and railways, seem to indicate 
that these two commodities produce a satisfactory 
budget. During the Kandy cricket week young 
planters trooped into the place by hundreds. Plant- 
ers are divided locally into three categories : the man- 
agers, "Peria Dorai," or "big masters," spoken of as 
"P. D.'s," the assistants, "Sinna Dorai," or "little 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 65 

masters," labelled "S. D.'s," and the premium-pupils, 
known as "creepers." 

Personally I am inclined to discredit the local legend 
that all male children born of white parents in Ceylon 
come into the world with abnormal strength of the 
right wrist, and a slight inherited callosity of the 
left elbow. This is supposed to be due to their par- 
ents having rested their left elbows on bar-counters 
for so many hours of their lives ; the development of 
the right wrist being attributed in the same way to the 
number of glasses their fathers have lifted with it. 
This, if authenticated by scientific evidence, would be 
an interesting example of heredity, but I suspect it 
to be an exaggeration. The bar-room in the hotel 
at Kandy was certainly of vast dimensions, and was 
continuously packed to overflowing during the cricket 
week, and an unusual notice conspicuously displayed, 
asking "gentlemen to refrain from singing in the 
passages and bedrooms at night," seemed to hint that 
undue conviviality was not unknown in the hotel ; but 
it must be remembered that these young fellows work 
very hard, and lead most solitary existences. An as- 
sistant-manager on a tea estate may see no white man 
for weeks except his own boss, or "P. D.," so it is 
perfectly natural that when they foregather with other 
young Englishmen of their own age during Colombo 
race week, or Kandy cricket week, they should grow 
a little uproarious, or even at times exceed the strict 
bounds of moderation, and small blame to them! 

Ceylon was formerly a great coffee-producing 
island, and the introduction of tea culture only dates 



66 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

from about 1882. In 1870 a fungus began attacking 
the coffee plantations, and in ten years this fungus 
killed practically all the coffee bushes, and reduced 
the planters to ruin. Instead of whining helplessly 
over their misfortunes, the planters had the energy 
and enterprise to replace their ruined coffee bushes 
with tea shrubs, and Ceylon is now one of the most 
important sources of the world's tea-supply. Tea- 
making — by which I do not imply the throwing of 
three spoonfuls of dried leaves into a teapot, but the 
transformation of the green leaf of a camellia into 
the familiar black spirals of our breakfast-tables — 
is quite an art in itself. The "tea-maker" has to judge 
when the freshly gathered leaves are sufficiently with- 
ered for him to begin the process, into the complica- 
tions of which I will not attempt to enter. I was 
much gratified, both in Ceylon and Assam, at noting 
how much of the tea-making machinery is manufac- 
tured in Belfast, for though Ulster enterprise is pro- 
verbial, I should never have anticipated it as taking 
this particular line. There is one peculiarly fascinat- 
ing machine in which a mechanical pestle, moving in 
an eccentric orbit, twists the flat leaf into the familiar 
narrow crescents that we infuse daily. The tea-plant 
is a pretty little shrub, with its pale-primrose, cistus- 
like flowers, but in appearance it cannot compete with 
the coffee tree, with its beautiful dark glossy foliage, 
its waxy white flowers, and brilliant scarlet berries. 

Peradeniya Botanical Gardens rank as the second 
finest in the world, being only surpassed by those at 
Buitenzorg in Java. I had the advantage of being 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 67 

shown their beauties by the curator himself, a most 
learned man, and what is by no means a synonymous 
term, a very interesting one, too. Holding the posi- 
tion he did, it is hardly necessary to insist on his na- 
tionality; his accent was still as marked as though 
he had only left his native Aberdeen a week before. 
He showed me a tall, graceful tree growing close to 
the entrance, with smooth, whitish bark, and a family 
resemblance to a beech. This was the ill-famed upas 
tree of Java, the subject of so many ridiculous legends. 
The curator told me that the upas (Antiaris tooci- 
carta) was unquestionably intensely poisonous, juice 
and bark alike. A scratch made on the finger by the 
bark might have very serious results, and the emana- 
tions from a newly lopped-off branch would be strong 
enough to bring out a rash; equally, any one foolish 
enough to drink the sap would most certainly die. 
The stories of the tree giving out deadly fumes had 
no foundation, for the curator had himself sat for 
three hours under the tree without experiencing any 
bad effects whatever. All the legends of the upas tree 
are based on an account of it by a Dr. Foersch in 1783. 
This mendacious medico declared that no living thing 
could exist within fifteen miles of the tree. The 
Peradeniya curator pointed out that Java was a vol- 
canic island, and one valley where the upas flourishes 
is certainly fatal to all animal life owing to the emana- 
tions of carbonic acid gas escaping from fissures in 
the soil. It was impossible to look at this handsome 
tree without some respect for its powers of evil, 
though I doubt if it be more poisonous than the West 



68 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

Indian manchineel. This latter insignificant tree is 
so virulently toxic that rain-drops from its leaves will 
raise a blister on the skin. 

Amongst the wonders of Peradeniya is a magnifi- 
cent avenue of talipat palms, surely the most majestic 
of their family, though they require intense heat to 
develop their splendid crowns of leaves. 

Colombo has been called the Clapham Junction of 
the East, for there steamship lines from Australia, 
China, Burmah, and the Dutch East Indies all meet, 
and the most unexpected friends turn up. 

I recall one arrival at Colombo in a Messageries 
Maritimes boat. On board was a most agreeable 
French lady going out with her children to join her 
husband, a French officer in Cochin China. I was 
leaving the ship at Colombo, but induced the French 
lady to accompany me on shore, the children being 
bribed with the promise of a ride in a "hackery" or 
trotting-bull carriage. None of the party had ever 
left France before. As we approached the landing- 
stage, which was, as usual, black with baggage-coolies 
waiting for a job, the French children began howling 
at the top of their voices. "The savages! the savages! 
We're frightened at the savages," they sobbed in 
French; "we want to go back to France." Their 
mother asked me quite gravely whether "the savages" 
here were well-disposed, as she had heard that they 
sometimes met strangers with a shower of arrows. 
And this in up-to-date, electric-lighted Colombo! 
We might have been Captain Cook landing in 
Tahiti, instead of peaceful travellers making their 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 69 

quiet way to an hotel amidst a harmless crowd of tip- 
seeking coolies. 

The unfamiliar is often unnecessarily alarming. 

I remember a small ten-year-old white Bermudian 
boy who accompanied his father to England for King 
George's coronation. The boy had never before left 
his cedar-clad, sunlit native archipelago, and after the 
ship had passed the Needles, and was making her way 
up the Solent, he looked with immense interest at this 
strange land which had suddenly appeared after three 
thousand miles of water. All houses in Bermuda are 
whitewashed, and their owners are obliged by law to 
whitewash their coral roofs as well. Bermuda, too, 
is covered with low cedar-scrub of very sombre hue, 
and there are no tall trees. The boy, a very sharp 
little fellow, was astonished at the red-brick of the 
houses on the Isle of Wight, and at their red-tile or 
dark slate roofs, and was also much impressed by the 
big oaks and lofty elms. Finally he turned to his 
father as the ship was passing Cowes : "Do you mean 
to tell me, Daddy, that the people living in these 
queer houses in this odd country are really human 
beings like us, and that they actually have human 
feelings like you and me?" 



CHAPTER III 

Frenchmen pleasant travelling companions — The limitations — 
Vicomte de Vogue, the innkeeper and the Ikon — An early 
oil-burning steamer— A modern Bluebeard — His "Blue 
Chamber" — Dupleix — His ambitious scheme — A disastrous 
period for France — A personal appreciation of the Emperor 
Nicholas II — A learned but versatile Orientalist — Pidgin 
English — Hong-Kong — An ancient Portuguese city in China 
— Duck junks — A comical Marathon race — Canton — Its 
fascination and its appalling smells — The malevolent 
Chinese devils — Precautions adopted against — "Foreign 
Devils" — The fortunate limitations of Chinese devils — The 
City of the Dead — A business interview. 

M. Des Etangs, the French traveller to whom I have 
already alluded, agreed to accompany me to the Far 
East, an arrangement which I welcomed, for he was 
a very cultivated and interesting man. Unexpectedly 
he was detained in Ceylon by a business matter, so 
I went on alone. 

I regretted this, for on two previous occasions I 
had found what a pleasant travelling companion an 
educated Frenchman can be. I do not think that the 
French, as a rule, are either acute or accurate observ- 
ers. They are too apt to start with preconceived 
theories of their own; anything which clashes with the 
ideas that they have already formed is rejected as 
evidence, whilst the smallest scrap of corroborative 
testimony is enlarged and distorted so that they may 
be enabled to justify triumphantly their original 

70 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 71 

proposition, added to which, Frenchmen are, as a 
rule, very poor linguists. This, of course, is speaking 
broadly, but I fancy that the French mind is very 
definite and clear-cut, yet rather lacking in receptiv- 
ity. The French suffer from the excessive develop- 
ment of the logical faculty in them. This same defi- 
nite quality in the French language, whilst delighting 
both my ear and my intelligence, rightly or wrongly 
prevents French poetry from making any appeal to 
me; it is too bright and sparkling, there is no mystery 
possible in so clear-cut a medium, added to which, 
every syllable in French having an equal value, no 
rhythm is possible, and French poetry has to rely on 
rhyme alone. 

It is not on the cloudless summer day that familiar 
objects take on vague and fantastic shapes; to effect 
that, mists and a rain-veiled sky are wanted. Then 
distances are blotted out, and the values of nearer ob- 
jects are transformed under the swirling drifts of 
vapour, and a new dream-world is created under one's 
very eyes. This is, perhaps, merely the point of view 
of a Northerner. 

As far back as 1881, I had made a trip down the 
Volga to Southern Russia with that most delightful 
of men, the late Vicomte Eugene Melchior de Vogue, 
the French Academician and man-of-letters. I ab- 
solve Vogue from the accusation of being unable to 
observe like the majority of his compatriots, nor, like 
them, was he a poor linguist. He had married a Rus- 
sian, the sister of General Anenkoff of Central Asian 
fame; spoke Russian fluently, and very few things 



72 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

escaped his notice. Though he was much older than 
me, no more charming companion could be imagined. 
A little incident at Kazan, on the Volga, amused me 
enormously. We were staying at a most indifferent 
hotel kept by a Frenchman. The French proprietor 
explained to us that July was the month during 
which the miraculous Ikon of the Kazan Madonna 
was carried from house to house by the priests. The 
fees for this varied from 25 roubles (then £2 10s.) 
for a short visit from the Ikon of five minutes, to 
200 roubles (£20) for the privilege of sheltering the 
miracle-working picture for an entire night. I must 
add that the original Ikon was supposed to have been 
dug up in Kazan in 1597. In 1612 it was removed to 
Moscow, and was transferred again in 1710 to Petro- 
grad, where a large and pretentious cathedral was 
built for its reception. In 1812, when Napoleon cap- 
tured Moscow, the Kazan Madonna was hastily sum- 
moned from Petrograd, and many Russians implicitly 
believe that the rout of the French was solely due to 
this wonder-working Ikon. In the meanwhile the in- 
habitants of Kazan realised that a considerable finan- 
cial asset had left their midst, so with commendable 
enterprise they had a replica made of the Ikon, which 
every one accepted as a perfectly satisfactory substi- 
tute, much as the Cingalees regarded their "Ersatz" 
Buddha's tooth at Kandy as fully equal to the origi- 
nal. The French landlord told us that in view of the 
strong local feeling, he was obliged, in the interests of 
his business, to pay for a visit from the Ikon, "afin 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 73 

de faire marcher mon commerce," and he invited 
Vogue and myself to be present at the ceremony. 

Next day we stood at the foot of a small back- 
staircase which had been prepared in Russian fashion 
for the reception of the Madonna. Both the steps 
and banisters of the stairs were entirely draped in 
clean white sheets, to which little sprigs of fir branches 
had been attached. On a landing, also draped with 
sheets, a little white-covered table with two lighted 
candles was to serve as a reposoir for the Ikon. The 
whole of the hotel staff — all Russians — were present, 
as well as the frock-coated landlord. The Madonna 
arrived in a gilt coach-and-four, a good deal the worse 
for wear, with a coachman and two shaggy-headed 
footmen, all bareheaded. The priests carried the 
Madonna up to the temporary altar, and the landlord 
advanced to pay his devotions. 

Now as a Roman Catholic he had little respect for 
an Ikon of the Eastern Church, nor as a Frenchman 
could he be expected to entertain lively feelings of 
gratitude to a miracle-working picture which was 
supposed by Russians to have brought about the ter- 
rible disasters to his countrymen in 1812. Confident 
in his knowledge that no one present, with the excep- 
tion of Vogue and myself, understood one word of 
French, the landlord fairly let himself go. 

Crossing himself many times after the Orthodox 
fashion, and making the low prostrations of the 
Eastern Church, he began: "Ah! vieille planche 
peinte, tu n'as pas d'idee comme je me fiche de toi." 
More low prostrations, and then, "Et c'est toi vieille 



74 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

croute qui imagines que tu as Chasse les Francais de 
ce pays en 1812?" More strenuous crossings, "Ah! 
Zut alors! et re-zut, et re-re zut! sale planche!" which 
may be Englished very freely as "Ah! you old painted 
board, you can have no conception of what I think 
of you! Are you really swollen-headed enough to 
imagine that it was you who drove the French out 
of Russia in 1812? Yah! then, you ugly old daub, 
and yah! again!" The Russian staff, not understand- 
ing one word of this, were much impressed by their 
master's devotional behaviour, but Vogue and I had 
to go into the street and laugh for ten minutes. 

The wife of a prominent official boarded the 
steamer at some stopping-place, with her two daugh- 
ters. They were pretentious folk, talking French, 
and giving themselves tremendous airs. When they 
heard Vogue and me talking the same language, she 
looked at us, gave a sniff, and observed in a loud 
voice, "Evidently two French commercial travellers I" 
Next morning she ignored our salutations. During 
the great heat of the day she read French aloud to 
her daughters, and to my great joy the book was one 
of Vogue's. She enlarged on the beauty of the style 
and language, so I could not help saying, "The author 
will much appreciate your compliment, madame, for 
he is sitting opposite you. This is M. de Vogue him- 
self." I need hardly say that the under-bred woman 
overwhelmed us with civilities after that. 

The Volga steamers were then built after the type 
of Mississippi boats, with immense superstructures; 
they were the first oil-burning steamers I Jiad ever 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 75 

seen, so I got the Captain's permission to go down to 
the engine-room. Instead of a grimy stokehole full 
of perspiring firemen and piles of coal, I found a 
clean, white-painted place with one solitary but clean 
man regulating polished taps. The Chief Engineer, 
a burly, red-headed, red-bearded man, came up and 
began explaining things to me. I could then talk 
Russian quite fluently, but the technicalities of ma- 
rine engineering were rather beyond me, and I had 
not the faintest idea of the Russian equivalents for, 
say, intermediate cylinder, or slide-valve. I stum- 
bled lamely along somehow until a small red-haired 
boy came in and cried in the strongest of Glasgow 
accents, "Your tea is waiting on ye, feyther." 

It appeared that the Glasgow man had been Head 
Engineer of the river steamboat company for ten 
years, but we had neither of us detected the other's 
nationality. 

On another occasion, whilst proceeding to India in 
a Messageries Maritimes boat, I made the acquaint- 
ance of an M. Bayol, a native of Marseilles, who had 
been for twenty-five years in business at Pondicherry, 
the French colony some 150 miles south of Madras. 
M. Bayol was a typical "Marius," or Marseillais: 
short, bald, bearded and rotund of stomach. It is 
unnecessary to add that he talked twenty to the 
dozen, with an immense amount of gesticulation, and 
that he could work himself into a frantic state of ex- 
citement over anything in two minutes. I heard on 
board that he had the reputation of being the shrewd- 
est business man in Southern India. He was most 



76 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

capital company, rolling out perpetual jokes and 
calembours, and bubbling over with exuberant joie de 
vivre. I think M. Bayol took a >fancy to me on ac- 
count of my understanding his Provencale patois, 
for, as a boy, I had learnt French in a Provencale- 
speaking district. 

All Englishmen are supposed in France to suffer 
from a mysterious disease known as "le spleen." I 
have not the faintest idea of what this means. The 
spleen is, I believe, an internal organ whose functions 
are very imperfectly understood, still it is an ac- 
cepted article of faith in France that every Briton 
is "devore de spleen," and that this lamentable state 
of things embitters his whole outlook on life, and casts 
a black shadow over his existence. When I got to 
know M. Bayol better during our evening tramps up 
and down the deck, he asked me confidentially what 
remedies I adopted when "ronge de spleen," and how 
I combated the attacks of this deplorable but pecu- 
liarly insular disease, and was clearly incredulous 
when I failed to understand him. This amazing man 
also told me that he had been married five times. Not 
one of his first four wives had been able to withstand 
the unhealthy climate of Pondicherry for more than 
eighteen months, so, after the demise of his fourth 
French wife, he had married a native, "ne pouvant 
vivre seul, j'ai tout bonnement epouse une indigene." 

M. Bayol insisted on showing me the glories of 
Pondicherry himself, an offer which I, anxious to see 
a Franco-Indian town, readily accepted. There is 
no harbour there, and owing to the heavy surf, the 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 77 

landing must be made in a surf -boat, a curious keel- 
less craft built of thin pliant planks sewn together 
with copper wire, which bobs about on the surface of 
the water like a cork. At Pondicherry, as in all 
French Colonial possessions, an attempt has been 
made to reproduce a little piece of France. There 
was the dusty "Grande Place," surrounded with even 
dustier trees and numerous cafes; the "Cafe du 
Progres"; the "Cafe de l'Union," and other stereo- 
typed names familiar from a hundred French towns, 
and pale-faced civilians, with a few officers in uniform, 
were seated at the usual little tables in front of them. 
Everything was as different as possible from an aver- 
age Anglo-Indian cantonment: even the natives 
spoke French, or what was intended to be French, 
amongst themselves. The whole place had a rather 
dejected, out-at-elbows appearance, but it atoned for 
its diminishing trade by its amazing number of offi- 
cials. That little town seemed to contain more bureau- 
crats than Calcutta, and almost eclipsed our own post- 
war gigantic official establishments. On arriving at 
my French friend's house, the fifth Madame Bayol, 
a lady of dark chocolate complexion, and numerous 
little pale coffee-coloured Bayols greeted their spouse 
and father with rapturous shouts of delight. Later 
in the day, M. Bayol, drawing me on one side, said, 
"We have become friends on the voyage; I will now 
show you the room which enshrines my most sacred 
memories," and drawing a key from his pocket, he 
unlocked a door, admitting me to a very large room 
perfectly bare and empty except for four stripped 



78 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

bedsteads standing in the centre. "These, mon ami, 
are the beds on which my four French wives breathed 
their last, and this room is very dear to me in conse- 
quence," and the fat little Marseillais burst into tears. 
I have no wish to be unfeeling, but I really felt as 
though I had stumbled undesignedly upon some of 
the more intimate details connected with Blue- 
beard's matrimonial difficulties, and when M. Bayol 
began, the tears streaming down his cheeks, to give 
me a brief account of his first wife's last moments, 
the influence of this Bluebeard chamber began assert- 
ing itself, and it was all I could do to refrain from 
singing (of course very sympathetically) the lines 
from Offenbach's Barbe-Bleue beginning: 

"Ma premiere femme est morte 
Que le diable l'emporte !" 

but on second thoughts I refrained. 

M. Bayol's garden reminded me of that of the im- 
mortal Tartarin of Tarascon, for the only green 
things in it grew in pots, and nothing was over four 
inches high. The rest of the garden consisted of 
bare, sun-baked tracts of clay, intersected by gravel 
walks. I felt certain that amongst these seedlings 
there must have been a two-inch high specimen of the 
Baobab "l'arbre geant," the pride of Tartarin's heart, 
the tree which, as he explained, might under favour- 
able conditions grow 200 feet high. After all, Mar- 
seilles and Tarascon are not far apart, and their in- 
habitants are very similar in temperament. 

I was pleased to see a fine statue of Dupleix at 
Pondicherry, for he was a man to whom scant justice 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 79 

has been done by his compatriots. Few people seem 
to realise how very nearly Dupleix succeeded in his 
design of building up a great French empire in India. 
He arrived in India in 1715, at the age of eighteen, 
and amassed a large fortune in legitimate trade; he 
became Administrator of Chandernagore, in Bengal, 
in 1730, and displayed such remarkable ability in this 
post that in 1741 he was appointed Governor-General 
of the French Indies. In 1742 war broke out between 
France and Britain, and at the outset the French 
arms were triumphant. Madras surrendered in 1746 
to a powerful French fleet under La Bourdonnais, the 
Governor of the Island of Reunion, and a counter- 
attack on Pondicherry by Admiral Boscawen's fleet 
in 1748 failed utterly, though the defence was con- 
ducted by Dupleix, a civilian. These easy French 
successes inspired Dupleix with the idea of establish- 
ing a vast French empire in India on the ruins of the 
Mogul monarchy, but here he was frustrated by the 
military genius of Clive, who, it must be remembered, 
started life as a civilian "writer" in the East India 
Company's service. Dupleix encountered his first 
check by Clive's dashing capture of Arcot in 1751. 
From that time the fortunes of war inclined with 
ever-increasing bias to the British side, and the de- 
cisive battle of Plassey in 1757 (three years after 
Dupleix's return to France) was a death-blow to 
the French aspirations to become the preponderant 
power in India. 

Dupleix was shabbily treated by France. He re- 
ceived but little support from the mother country; 



80 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

the vast sums he had expended from his private re- 
sources in prosecuting the war were never refunded 
to him; he was consistently maligned by the jealous 
and treacherous La Bourdonnais, and after his recall 
to France in 1754 his services to his country were 
never recognised, and he died in poverty. 

G. B. Malleson's Dupleia? is a most impartial and 
interesting account of this remarkable man's life: it 
has been translated into French and is accepted by the 
French as an accurate text-book. 

The whole reign of Louis XV. was a supremely dis- 
astrous period for French Colonial aspirations. Not 
only did the dream of a great French empire in the 
East crumble away just as it seemed on the very point 
of realisation, but after Wolfe's victory on the 
Heights of Abraham at Quebec, Canada was formally 
ceded by France to Britain in 1763, by the Treaty 
of Paris. 

This ill fortune pursued France into the succeed- 
ing reign of Louis XVI., for in April, 1782, Rodney's 
great victory over Count de Grasse off Dominica 
transferred the Lesser Antilles from French to 
British suzerainty. 

The same sort of blight seemed to hang over 
France during Louis XV. 's reign, as overshadowed 
the Russia of the ill-starred Nicholas II. Nothing 
could possibly go right with either of them, and it 
may be that the prime causes were the same: the as- 
sumption of absolute power by an irresolute monarch, 
lacking the intellectual equipment which alone would 
enable him to justify his claims to supreme power — 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 81 

though I hasten to disclaim any comparison between 
these two rulers. 

Between Louis XV., vicious, selfish and incapable, 
always tied to the petticoat and caprices of some new 
mistress, and the unfortunate Nicholas II., well- 
intentioned, and almost fanatically religious, the af- 
fectionate father and the devoted husband, no com- 
parison is possible, except as regards their .limitations 
for the supreme positions they occupied. 

I have recounted elsewhere how, when Nicholas II. 
visited India as Heir Apparent in 1890, 1 saw a great 
deal of him, for he stayed ten days with my brother- 
in-law, Lord Lansdowne, at Calcutta and Barrack- 
pore, and I was brought into daily contact with him. 
The Czarevitch, as he then was, had a very high 
standard of duty, though his intellectual equipment 
was but moderate. He had a perfect craze about rail- 
way development, and it must not be forgotten that 
that stupendous undertaking, the Trans-Siberian 
Railway, was entirely due to his initiative. At the 
time of his visit to India, Nicholas II. was obsessed 
with the idea that the relations between Great Britain 
and Russia would never really improve until the Rus- 
sian railways were linked up with the British-Indian 
system, a proposition which responsible Indian Offi- 
cials viewed with a marked lack of enthusiasm. The 
Czarevitch was courteous, gentle and sincere, but 
though full of good intentions, he was fatally incon- 
stant of purpose, and his mental endowments were 
insufficient for the tremendous responsibilities to 
which he was to succeed, and in that one fact lies the 



82 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

pathos of the story of this most unfortunate of 
monarchs. 

To return from the eighteenth to the twentieth 
century, and from the disastrous collapse of the 
French Colonial Empire to my own infinitely trivial 
personal experiences, I regretted the business which 
had detained M. Des Etangs in Ceylon, and deprived 
me of the company of so agreeable and cultivated a 
man-of-the-world. 

There was a Dr. Munro on board the liner. Dr. 
Munro, at that time Principal of a Calcutta College 
is, I believe, one of the greatest Oriental scholars 
living. On going into the smoking-room of the 
steamer one morning, I found the genial rotund little 
Professor at work with an exquisitely illuminated 
Chinese manuscript before him. He explained to me 
that it was a very interesting Chinese document of the 
twelfth century, and that he was translating it into 
Arabic for the benefit of his pupils. The amazing 
erudition of a man who could translate off-hand an 
ancient Chinese manuscript into Arabic, without the 
aid of dictionaries or of any works of reference, 
amidst all the hubbub of the smoking-room of an 
ocean liner, left me fairly gasping. Dr. Munro had 
acquired his Oriental languages at the University of 
St. Petersburg, so, in addition to his other attain- 
ments, he spoke Russian as fluently as English. 

There was another side to this merry little Pro- 
fessor. We had on board the vivacious and tuneful 
Miss Grace Palotta, who was making a concert-tour 
round the world. Miss Palotta, whose charming 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 83 

personality will be remembered by the frequenters 
of the old Gaiety Theatre, was a Viennese by birth, 
and she sang those tuneful, airy little Viennese songs, 
known as "Wiener Couplets," to perfection. She 
readily consented to give a concert on board, but said 
she must be sustained by a chorus. Dr. Munro him- 
self selected, trained and led the chorus ; whilst I had 
to replace Miss Palotta's accompanist who was pros- 
trate with sea-sickness. 

And so the big liner crept on slowly into steaming, 
oily, pale-green seas, gliding between vividly green 
islands in the orchid-house temperature of the Malay 
Peninsula, a part of the world worth visiting, if only 
to eat the supremely delicious mangosteen, though 
even an unlimited diet of this luscious fruit would 
hardly reconcile the average person to a perpetual 
steam bath, and to an intensely enervating atmos- 
phere. Nature must have been in a sportive mood 
when she evolved the durian. This singular Malay 
fruit smells like all the concentrated drains of a town 
seasoned with onions. One single durian can poison 
out a ship with its hideous odour, yet those able to 
overcome its revolting smell declare the flavour of 
the fruit to be absolutely delicious. 

It is a little humiliating for a middle-aged gentle- 
man to find that on arriving in China he is expected 
to revert to the language of the nursery, and that he 
must request his Chinese servant to "go catchee me 
one piecee cuppee tea." On board the Admiral's 
yacht, it required a little reflection before the intima- 
tion that "bleakfast belong leady top-side" could be 



84 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

translated into the information that breakfast was 
ready on deck. Why adding "ee" to every word 
should render it more intelligible to the Celestial un- 
derstanding, beats me. There are people who think 
that by tacking "O" on to every English word they 
render themselves perfectly clear to Italians and 
Spaniards, though this theory seems hardly justified 
by results. "Pidgin English," of course, merely 
means "business English," and has been evolved as an 
easy means of communication for business purposes 
between Europeans and Chinamen. The Governor 
of Hong-Kong's Chinese secretary prided himself on 
his accurate and correct English. I heard the Gov- 
ernor ask this secretary one day where a certain re- 
port was. "I placed it in the second business-hole on 
your Excellency's desk," answered Mr. Wung Ho, 
who evidently considered it very vulgar to use the 
term "pigeon-hole." 

Considering that eighty years ago, when it was 
first ceded to Britain, Hong-Kong was a barren, tree- 
less, granite island, it really is an astonishing place. 
It is easily the handsomest modern city in Asia, has a 
population of 400,000, and is by a long way the busi- 
est port in the world. It is an exceedingly pretty 
place, too, with its rows of fine European houses rising 
in terraces out of a sea of greenery, and it absolutely 
hums with prosperity. If Colombo is the Clapham 
Junction, Hong-Kong is certainly the Crewe of the 
East, for steamship lines to every part of the world 
are concentrated here. With the exception of racing 
ponies, there is not one horse on the island. 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 85 

Macao, the old Portuguese colony, is only forty 
miles from Hong-Kong. The arrangements on the 
river steamers are rather peculiar, for only European 
passengers are allowed on the spar deck. All Chinese 
passengers, of whatever degree, have to descend to 
the lower decks, which are enclosed with strong steel 
bars. Before the ship starts the iron gates of com- 
munication are shut and padlocked, so that all Chinese 
passengers are literally enclosed in a steel cage, shut 
off alike from the upper deck and the engine-room. 
These precautions were absolutely necessary, for time 
and time again gangs of river-pirates have come on 
board these steamers in the guise of harmless passen- 
gers ; at a pre-arranged signal they have overpowered 
and murdered the white officers, thrown the Chinese 
passengers overboard and then made off with the ship 
and her cargo. An arms-rack of rifles on the Euro- 
pean deck told its own story. 

Macao has belonged to Portugal since 1555. Its 
harbour has silted up, and its once flourishing trade 
has dwindled to nothing. Gambling houses are the 
only industry of the place. There are row and rows 
of these opposite the steamer landing, all kept by 
Chinamen, garish with coloured electric lights, each 
one clamorously proclaiming that it is the "only first- 
class gambling house in Macao." A crowded special 
steamer leaves Hong-Kong every Sunday morning 
for Macao, for the special purpose of affording the 
European community an opportunity to leave most 
of their excess profits in the pockets of the Chinese 
proprietors of these places. The Captain and Chief 



86 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

Engineer of the boat, who, it is almost superfluous 
to add, were of course both Clyde men, like good Scots 
deplored this Sabbath-breaking ; but like equally good 
Scots they admitted how very lucrative the Sunday 
traffic was to the steamboat company, and I gathered 
that they both got a commission on this. 

The old town of Macao is a piece of sixteenth and 
seventeenth century Portugal transplanted into 
China. It is wonderful to find a southern European 
town complete with cathedral, "pracas," fountains, 
and statues, dumped down in the Far East. The 
place, too, is as picturesque as a scene from an 
opera, and China is the last spot where one would 
expect to find lingering traces of Gothic influence in 
carved doorways and other architectural details. As 
far as externals went Camoens, the great Portuguese 
poet, can scarcely have realised his exile during the 
two years, 1556-1558, of his banishment to Macao. 
He most creditably utilised this period of enforced 
rest by writing The Lusiads, a poem which his coun- 
trymen are inclined to overrate. All the familiar char- 
acteristics of an old Portuguese town are met with 
here, the blue and pink colour-washed houses, an 
ample sufficiency of ornate churches, public fountains 
everywhere, and every shop -sign and notice is written 
in Portuguese, including the interminable Portuguese 
street names. The only thing lacking seemed the in- 
habitants. I presume the town must have some 
inhabitants, but I did not see a single one. Possibly 
they were taking their siestas, or were shut up in 
their houses, meditating on the bygone glories of 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 87 

Portugal, tempered with regrets that they had neg- 
lected to dredge their harbour. 

Admiral Sir Hedworth Meux, the Naval Com- 
mander-in-Chief in the Pacific, who happens to be my 
sister's son, told me that he was sending a destroyer 
for three or four days up the Canton River, on special 
service, and asked if I would care to go, and I natu- 
rally accepted the offer. The Admiral did not go 
up himself, but sent his Flag-Captain and Flag- 
Lieutenant. The marshy banks of the Canton River 
are lined with interminable paddy-fields, for, as every 
one knows, rice is a crop that must be grown under 
water. After the rice harvest, these swampy fields are 
naturally full of fallen grain, and thrifty John China- 
man feeds immense flocks of ducks on the stubbles of 
the paddy-fields. The ducks are brought down by 
thousands in junks, and quack and gobble to their 
hearts' content in the fields all day, waddling back 
over a plank to their junks at night. At sunset, one 
of the most comical sights in the world can be wit- 
nessed. A Chinese boy comes ashore from each junk 
with a horn, which he blows as a signal to the ducks 
that bedtime has arrived. In his other hand the boy 
has a rattan cane, with which he administers a tre- 
mendous thrashing to the last ten ducks to arrive on 
board. The ducks know this, and in that singular 
country their progenitors have probably been 
thrashed in the same way for a thousand years, so 
they all have an inherited sense of the dangers of the 
corporal punishment threatening them. As soon as 
the horn sounds, thousands of ducks start the maddest 



88 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

of Marathon races back to their respective junks, 
which they never mistake, with such a quacking and 
gobbling and pushing of each other aside, as the un- 
gainly fowls waddle along at the top of their speed, 
as must be witnessed to be credited. The duck has 
many advantages : in his wild state, his extreme wari- 
ness and his powerful flight make him a splendid 
sporting bird, and when dead he has most estimable 
qualities after a brief sojourn in the kitchen. Do- 
mesticated, though he can scarcely be classed as a 
dainty feeder, he makes a strong appeal to some peo- 
ple, especially after he has contracted an intimate 
alliance with sage and onions, but he was never in- 
tended by Nature for a sprinter, nor are his webbed 
feet adapted for rapid locomotion. Sufferers from 
chronic melancholia would, I am sure, benefit by wit- 
nessing the nightly football scrums and speed-contests 
of these Chinese ducks, for I defy any one to see them 
without becoming helpless with laughter. 

The river in the neighbourhood of Canton is so 
covered with junks, sampans, and other craft, that, 
in comparison to it, the Thames at Henley during 
regatta week would look like a deserted waste of 
water. One misses at Canton the decorative war- 
junks of the Shanghai River. These war- junks, 
though perfectly useless either for defence or attack, 
are gorgeous objects to the eye, with their carving, 
their scarlet lacquer and profuse gilding. A Chinese 
stern-wheeler is a quaint craft, for her wheel is noth- 
ing but a treadmill, manned by some thirty half -naked 
coolies, who go through a regular treadmill drill, 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 89 

urging the boat along at perhaps three miles an hour. 
In addition to their deck passengers, these boats have 
rows of little covered niches for superior personages, 
and in every niche sits a grave, motionless Chinaman, 
looking for all the world like those carved Chinese 
cabinets we sometimes see, with a little porcelain fig- 
ure squatting in each carved compartment. 

We had a naval interpreter on board, a jovial, 
hearty, immensely fat old Chinaman. Our destroyer 
had four funnels, but as we were going up the river 
under easy steam, only the forward boilers were 
going, so that whilst our two forward funnels, 
"Matthew" and "Mark," were smoking bravely, the 
two after ones, "Luke" and "John," were unsullied 
by the faintest wisp of a smoke pennant trailing from 
their black orifices. Our old interpreter was much 
distressed at this, for, as far as I could judge, his 
countrymen gauged a vessel's fighting power solely 
by the amount of smoke that she emitted, and he 
feared that we should be regarded with but scanty 
respect. 

The British and French Consulate-Generals at 
Canton are situated on a large artificial island, known 
as Sha-mien. Here, too, the European business men 
live in the most comfortable Europe-like houses, sur- 
rounded with gardens and lawn-tennis courts. Here 
is the cricket-ground and the club. Being in the Ear 
East, the latter is, of course, equipped with one of the 
most gigantic bar-rooms ever seen. The British 
Consul-General had ordered chairs for us in which 
to be carried through the city, as it would be deroga- 



90 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

tory to the dignity of a European to be seen walking 
on foot in a Chinese town. Our business with the 
Consul-General finished, we started on our tour of 
inspection, the party consisting of the Flag-Captain, 
the Flag-Lieutenant, the interpreter and myself, to- 
gether with a small midshipman, who, being anxious 
to see Canton, had somehow managed to get three 
days' leave and to smuggle himself on board the de- 
stroyer. The Consul- General warned us that the 
smells in the native city would be unspeakably ap- 
palling, and advised us to smoke continuously, very 
kindly presenting each of us with a handful of mild 
Borneo cheroots. 

The canal separating Sha-mien from the city is 100 
feet broad, but I doubt if anywhere else in the world 
100 feet separates the centuries as that canal does» 
On the one side, green lawns, gardens, trees, and a 
very fair imitation of Europe. A few steps over a 
fortified bridge, guarded by Indian soldiers and In- 
dian policemen, and you are in the China of a thou- 
sand years ago, absolutely unchanged, except for the 
introduction of electric light and telephones. The 
English manager of the Canton Electric Co. told me 
that the natives were wonderfully adroit at stealing 
current. One would not imagine John Chinaman an 
expert electrician, yet these people managed some- 
how to tap the electric mains, and the manager esti- 
mated the weekly loss on stolen power as about £500. 

No street in Canton is wider than eight feet, and 
many of them are only five feet broad. They are 
densely packed with yellow humanity, though there 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 91 

is no wheeled traffic whatever. There are countless 
miles of these narrow, stifling alleys, paved with 
rough granite slabs, under which festers the sewage 
of centuries. The smells are unbelievably hideous. 
Except for an occasional canal, a reeking open sewer, 
there are no open spaces whatever. And yet these 
narrow alleys of two-storied houses are marvellously 
picturesque, with coloured streamers and coloured 
lanterns drooping from every house and shop, and the 
shops themselves are a joy to the eye. They are en- 
tirely open to the street in front, but in the far dim 
recesses of every one there is a species of carved rere- 
dos, over which dragons, lacquered black, or lacquered 
red, gilded or silvered, sprawl artistically. In front 
of this screen there is always a red-covered joss table, 
where red lights burn, and incense-sticks smoulder, 
all of which, as shall be explained later, are precau- 
tions to thwart the machinations of the peculiarly 
malevolent local devils. In food shops, hideous and 
obscene entrails of unknown animals gape repellently 
on the stranger, together with strings and strings of 
dried rats, and other horrible comestibles; in every 
street the yellow population seems denser and denser, 
the colour more brilliant and the smells more sicken- 
ing. We could not have stood it but for the thought- 
ful Consul-General's Borneo cigars, though the small 
midshipman, being still of tender years, was brought 
to public and ignominious disaster by his second 
cheroot. After two hours of slow progress in carry- 
ing-chairs, through this congeries of narrow, unsa- 
voury alleys, now jostled by coolies carrying bales of 



92 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

merchandise suspended from long bamboos resting on 
their shoulders ( exactly as they did in the pictures of 
a book, called Far Off, which I had as a child), now 
pushed on one side by the palanquin of a mandarin, 
we hungered for fresh air and open spaces, less 
crowded by yellow oblique-eyed Mongolians; still, 
though we all felt as though we were in a nightmare, 
we had none of us ever seen anything like it, and in 
spite of our declarations that we never wished to see 
this evil-smelling warren of humanity again, somehow 
its uncanny fascination laid hold of us, and we started 
again over the same route next morning. The small 
midshipman had to be restrained from indulging in 
his yearning to dine off puppy-dog in a Chinese res- 
taurant, in spite of the gastric disturbances occasioned 
by his precocious experiments with cheroots. 

I imagine that every Chinaman liable to zymotic 
diseases died thousands of years ago, and that by the 
law of the survival of the fittest all Chinamen born 
now are immune from filth diseases; that they can 
drink sewage-water with impunity, and thrive under 
conditions which would kill any Europeans in a week. 

The inhabitants of Canton are, I believe, mostly 
Taoists by religion, but their lives are embittered by 
their constant struggles with the local devils. Most 
fortunately Chinese devils have their marked limita- 
tions ; for instance, they cannot go round a corner, and 
most mercifully they suffer from constitutional timid- 
ity, and can be easily frightened away by fire-crack- 
ers. Human beings inhabiting countries subject to 
pests, have usually managed to cope with them by 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 93 

adopting counter-measures. In mosquito-ridden 
countries people sleep under mosquito-nets, thus 
baffling those nocturnal blood-suckers; in parts of 
Ceylon infested with snakes, sharpened zig-zag snake- 
boards are fastened to the window-sills, which prove 
extremely painful to intruding reptiles. The Chinese, 
as a safeguard against their devils, have adopted the 
peculiar "cocked hat" corner to their roofs, which we 
see reproduced in so much of Chippendale's work. 
It is obvious that, with an ordinary roof, any ill- 
disposed devil would summon some of his fellows, and 
they would fly up, get their shoulders under the cor- 
ner of the eaves, and prise the roof off in no time. 
With the peculiar Chinese upward curve of the cor- 
ners, the devils are unable to get sufficient leverage, 
and so retire discomfited. Most luckily, too, they de- 
test the smell of incense-sticks, and cannot abide the 
colour red, which is as distasteful to them as it is to 
a bull, but though it moves the latter to fury, it only 
inspires the devils with an abject terror. Accordingly, 
any prudent man can, by an abundant display of red 
silk streamers, and a plentiful burning of joss-sticks, 
keep his house practically free from these pests. A 
rich Chinaman who has built himself a new house, will 
at once erect a high wall immediately in front of it. 
It obstructs the light and keeps out the air, but owing 
to the inability of Chinese devils to go round corners it 
renders the house as good as devil-proof. 

We returned after dark from our second visit to 
the city. However much the narrow streets may have 
offended the nose, they unquestionably gratified the 



94 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

eye with the endless vista of paper lanterns, all softly 
aglow with crimson, green, and blue, as the place 
reverberated with the incessant banging of fire- 
crackers. The families of the shopkeepers were all 
seated at their supper-tables (for the Chinese are the 
only Orientals who use chairs and tables as we do) 
in the front portions of the shop. As women are 
segregated in China, only the fathers and sons were 
present at this simple evening meal of sewage-fed fish, 
stewed rat and broiled dog, but never for one instant 
did they relax their vigilance against possible attacks 
by their invisible foes. It is clear that an intelligent 
devil would select this very moment, when every one 
was absorbed in the pleasures of the table, to pene- 
trate into the shop, where he could play havoc with the 
stock before being discovered and ejected. Accord- 
ingly, little Ping Pong, the youngest son, had to wait 
for his supper, and was sent into the street with a 
large packet of fire-crackers to scare devils from the 
vicinity, and if little Ping Pong was like other small 
boys, he must have hugely enjoyed making such an 
appalling din. Every single shop had a stone pedes- 
tal before it, on which a lamp was burning, for experi- 
ence has shown how useful a deterrent this is to any 
but the most abandoned devils ; they will at once pass 
on to a shop unprotected by a guardian light. 

We had been on the outskirts of the city that day, 
and I was much struck with an example of Chinese 
ingenuity. The suburban inhabitants all seem to keep 
poultry, and all these fowls were of the same breed — 
small white bantams. So, to identify his own prop- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 95 

erty, Ching Wan dyed all his chickens' tails orange, 
whilst Hung To's fowls scratched about with mauve 
tails, and Kyang Foo's hens gave themselves great 
airs on the strength of their crimson tail feathers. 

It is curious that, in spite of its wealth and huge 
population, Canton should contain no fine temples. 
The much-talked-of Five-Storied Pagoda is really 
hardly worth visiting, except for the splendid pano- 
rama over the city obtained from its top floor. 
Canton here appears like one endless sea of brown 
roofs extending almost to the horizon. The brown 
sea of roof appears to be quite unbroken, for, from 
that height, the narrow alleys of street disappear en- 
tirely. We were taken to a large temple on the out- 
skirts of the city. It was certainly very big, also very 
dirty and ill-kept. Compared with the splendid tem- 
ples of Nikko in Japan, glowing with scarlet and 
black lacquer, and gleaming with gold, temples on 
which cunning craftsmanship of wood-carving, enam- 
els and bronze-work has been lavished in almost super- 
fluous profusion, or even with the severer but digni- 
fied temples of unpainted cryptomeria wood at 
Kyoto, this Chinese pagoda was scarcely worth look- 
ing at. It had the usual three courts, an outer, mid- 
dle, and inner one, and in the middle court a number 
of students were seated on benches. I am afraid that 
I rather puzzled our fat Chinese interpreter by in- 
quiring of him whether these were the local Benchers 
of the Middle Temple. 

The Chinese dislike to foreigners is well known, so 
is the term "foreign devils," which is applied to them. 



96 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

Our small party met with a most hostile reception 
that day in one part of the city, and the crowd were 
very menacing until addressed by our fat old inter- 
preter. The reason of this is very simple. Chinamen 
have invariably chocolate-coloured eyes, so the great 
distorted wooden figures of devils so commonly seen 
outside temple gates are always painted with light 
eyes, in order to give them an inhuman and unearthly 
appearance to Chinese minds. It so happened that 
the Flag-Captain, the Flag-Lieutenant, the midship- 
man and myself, had all four of us light-coloured eyes, 
either grey or blue, the colour associated with devils, 
in the Chinese intelligence. We were unquestionably 
foreigners, so the prima facie evidence of satanic 
origin against us was certainly strong. We ourselves 
would be prejudiced against an individual with bright 
magenta eyes, and we might be tempted to associate 
every kind of evil tendency with his abnormal colour- 
ing; to the Chinese, grey eyes must appear just as 
unnatural as magenta eyes would to us. We were 
inclined to attribute the hostile demonstration to the 
small snottie, who, in spite of warnings, had again 
experimented with cheroots. His unbecoming pallor 
would have naturally predisposed a Chinese crowd 
against us. 

The feeling of utter helplessness in a country where 
one is unable to speak one word of the language is 
most exasperating. My youngest brother, who is 
chairman of a steamship company, had occasion to go 
to the Near East nine years ago on business connected 
with his company. The steamer called at the Piraeus 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 97 

for eight hours, and my brother, who had never been 
in Athens, took a taxi and saw as much of "the city 
of the violet crown" as was possible in the time. He 
could speak no modern Greek, but when the taxi-man, 
on their return to the Piraeus, demanded by signs £7 
as his fare, my brother, hot with indignation at such 
an imposition, summoned up all his memories of the 
Greek Testament, and addressed the chauffeur as 
follows: "& TafravdpwTe/iJLr) yhoirol" Stupefied at hearing 
the classic language of his country, the taxi-man at 
once became more reasonable in his demands. After 
this, who will dare to assert that there are no advan- 
tages in a classical education? 

All the hillsides round Chinese cities are dotted 
with curious stone erections in the shape of horseshoes. 
These are the tombs of wealthy Chinamen ; the points 
of the compass they face, and the period which must 
elapse before the deceased can be permanently buried, 
are all determined by the family astrologers, for 
Chinese devils can be as malignant to the dead as to 
the living, though they seem to reserve their animosi- 
ties for the more opulent of the population. 

It is to meet the delay of years which sometimes 
elapses between the death of a person and his perma- 
nent burial, that the "City of the Dead" exists in, 
Canton. This is not a cemetery, but a collection of 
nearly a thousand mortuary chapels. The "City of 
the Dead" is the pleasantest spot in that nightmare 
city. A place of great open sunlit spaces, and streets 
of clean white-washed mortuaries, sweet with masses 
of growing flowers. After the fetid stench of the 



98 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

narrow, airless streets, the fresh air and sunlight of 
this "City of the Dead" were most refreshing, and its 
absolute silence was welcome after the deafening tur- 
moil of the town. We were there in spring-time, and 
hundreds of blue-and-white porcelain vases, of the 
sort we use as garden ornaments, were gorgeous with 
flowering azaleas of all hues, or fragrant with freesias. 
All the mortuaries, though of different sizes, were 
built on the same plan, in two compartments, sepa- 
rated by pillars with a carved wooden screen between 
them. Behind this screen the cylindrical lacquered 
coffin is placed, a most necessary precaution, for 
Chinese devils being fortunately unable to go round 
a corner, the occupant of the coffin is thus safe from 
molestation. Other elementary safeguards are also 
adopted; a red-covered altar invariably stands in 
front of the screen, adorned with candles and artificial 
flowers, and incense-sticks are perpetually burning 
on it. What with the incense-sticks and abundant red 
silk streamers, an atmosphere is created which must 
be thoroughly uncongenial, even to the most irre- 
claimable devil. The outer chapel always contains 
two or four large chairs for the family to meditate in. 
It must be remembered that the favourite recrea- 
tion of the Chinese is to sit and meditate on the tombs 
of their ancestors, and though in these mortuaries 
this pastime cannot be carried out in its entirety, this 
modified form is universally regarded as a very satis- 
factory substitute. In one chapel containing the re- 
mains of the wife of the Chinese Ambassador in 
Rome, there was a curious blend of East and West. 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 99 

Amongst the red streamers and joss-sticks there were 
metal wreaths and dried palm wreaths inscribed, "A 
notre chere collegue Madame Tsin-Kyow" ; an unex- 
pected echo of European diplomatic life to find in 
Canton. 

The rent paid for these places is very high, and as 
the length of time which the body must rest there 
depends entirely upon the advice of the astrologers, 
it is not uncharitable to suppose that there must be 
some understanding between them and the proprietor 
of the "City of the Dead." 

We can even suppose some such conversation as 
the following between the managing-partner of a firm 
of long-established family astrologers and that same 
proprietor: 

"Good-morning, Mr. Chow Chung; I have come to 
you with the melancholy news of the death of our 
esteemed fellow-citizen, Hang Wang Kai. A fine 
man, and a great loss! What I liked about him was 
that he was such a thorough Chinaman of the good 
old stamp. A wealthy man, sir, a very wealthy man. 
The family are clients of mine, and they have just 
rung me up, asking me to cast a horoscope to ascer- 
tain the wishes of the stars with regard to the date of 
burial of our poor friend. How inscrutable are the 
decrees of the heavenly bodies ! They may recommend 
the immediate interment of our friend: on the other 
hand, they may wish it deferred for two, five, ten, or 
even twenty years, in which case our friend would be 
one of the fortunate tenants of your delightful Gar- 
den of Repose. Quite so. Casting a horoscope is 



100 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

very laborious work, and I can but obey blindly the 
stars' behests. Exactly. Should the stars recom- 
mend our poor friend's temporary occupation of one 
of your attractive little Maisonettes, I should expect, 
to compensate me for my labours, a royalty of 20 per 
cent, on the gross (I emphasize the gross) rental paid 
by the family for the first two years. They, of course, 
would inform me of any little sum you did them the 
honour to accept from them. From two to five years, 
I should expect a royalty of 30 per cent. ; from five 
to ten years, 40 per cent. ; on any period over ten years 
50 per cent. Yes, I said fifty. Surely I do not un- 
derstand you to dissent? The stars may save us all 
trouble by advising Hang Wang Kai's immediate 
interment. Thank you. I thought that you would 
agree. These terms, of course, are only for the 
Chinese and Colonial rights; I must expressly reserve 
the American rights, for, as I need hardly remind 
you, the Philippine Islands are now United States 
territory, and the constellations may recommend the 
temporary transfer of our poor friend to American 
soil. Thank you; I thought that we should agree. 
It only remains for me to instruct my agents, Messrs. 
Ap Wang & Son, to draw up an agreement in tfee 
ordinary form on the royalty basis I have indicated, 
for our joint signature. The returns will, I presume, 
be made up as usual, to March 31 and September 30. 
As I am far too upset by the loss of our friend to be 
able to talk business, I will now, with your permission, 
withdraw." 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 101 

Had I been born a citizen of Canton, I should 
unquestionably have articled my son to an astrologer, 
convinced that I was securing for him an assured and 
lucrative future. 



CHAPTER IV 

The glamour of the West Indies — Captain Marryat and Michael 
Scott — Deadly climate of the islands in the eighteenth cen- 
tury — The West Indian planters — Difference between East 
and West Indies — "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we 
die" — Training-school for British Navy — A fruitless voyage 
— Quarantine — Distant view of Barbados — Father Labat — 
The last of the Emperors of Byzantium — Delightful little 
Lady Nugent and her diary of 1802 — Her impressions of 
Jamaica — Wealthy planters — Their hideous gormandising — 
A simple morning meal — An aldermanic dinner — How the 
little Nugents were gorged — Haiti — Attempts of General Le 
Clerc to secure British intervention in Haiti — Presents to 
Lady Nugent — Her Paris dresses described — Our arrival in 
Jamaica — Its marvellous beauty — The bewildered Guards- 
man — Little trace of Spain left in Jamaica — The Spaniards 
as builders — British and Spanish Colonial methods con- 
trasted. 

Since the earliest days of my boyhood, the West 
Indies have exercised a quite irresistible fascination 
over me. This was probably due to my having read 
and re-read Peter Simple and Tom Cringle's Log 
over and over again, until I knew them almost by 
heart; indeed I will confess that even at the present 
day the glamour of these books is almost as strong 
as it used to be, and that hardly a year passes without 
my thumbing once again their familiar pages. Both 
Captain Marryat and Michael Scott knew their West 
Indies well, for Marryat had served on the station in 
either 1813 or 1814, and Michael Scott lived for six- 
teen years in Jamaica, from 1806 to 1822, at first as 
manager of a sugar estate, and then as a merchant 
in Kingston. Marryat and Scott were practically 

102 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 103 

contemporaries, though the former was the younger 
by three years, being born in 1792. I am told that 
now-a-days boys care for neither of these books; if 
so, the loss is theirs. What attracted me in these 
authors' West Indian pictures was the fact that here 
was a community of British-born people living a 
reckless, rollicking, Charles Lever-like sort of life 
in a most deadly climate, thousands of miles from 
home, apparently equally indifferent to earthquakes, 
hurricanes, or yellow fever, for at the beginning of 
the twentieth century no one who has not read the 
Colonial records, or visited West Indian churches, 
can form the faintest idea of the awful ravages of 
yellow fever, nor of the vast amount of victims this 
appalling scourge claimed. Now, improved sanita- 
tion and the knowledge that the yellow death is car- 
ried by the Stegomyia mosquito, with the precaution- 
ary methods suggested by that knowledge, have al- 
most entirely eliminated yellow fever from the West 
India islands; but in Marryat and Scott's time to be 
ordered to the West Indies was looked upon as equiva- 
lent to a death sentence. Yet every writer enlarges 
upon the exquisite beauty of these green, sun-kissed 
islands, and regrets bitterly that so enchanting an 
earthly paradise should be the very ante-room of 
death. 

In spite of the unhealthy climate, in the days when 
King Sugar reigned undisputed, the owners of sugar 
estates, attracted by the enormous fortunes then to 
be made, and fully alive to the fact that in the case of 
absentee proprietors profits tended to go everywhere 



104 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

except into the owners' pockets, deliberately braved 
the climate, settled down for life (usually a brief 
one) in either Jamaica or Barbados, built themselves 
sumptuous houses, stocked with silver plate and rare 
wines, and held high and continual revel until such 
time as Yellow Jack should claim them. In the 
East Indies the soldiers and Civil Servants of "John 
Company," and the merchant community, "shook the 
pagoda tree" until they had accumulated sufficient 
fortunes on which to retire, when they returned to 
England with yellow faces and torpid livers, grum- 
bling like Jos Sedley to the ends of their lives about 
the cold, and the carelessness of English cooks in 
preparing curries, and harbouring unending regrets 
for the flesh-pots and comforts of life in Boggley 
Wollah, which in retrospect no doubt appeared more 
attractive than they had done in reality. The West 
Indian, on the other hand, settled down permanently 
with his wife and family in the island of his choice. 
Barbados and Jamaica are the only two tropical coun- 
tries under the British flag where there was a resident 
white gentry born and bred in the country, with coun- 
try places handed down from father to son. In these 
two islands not one word of any language but Eng- 
lish was ever to be heard from either black or white. 
The English parochial system had been transplanted 
bodily, and successfully, with guardians and overseers 
complete ; in a word, they were colonies in the strictest 
sense of the word; transplanted portions of the 
motherland, with most of its institutions, dumped 
down into the Caribbean Sea, but blighted until 1834 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 105 

by the curse of negro slavery. It was this overseas 
England, set amidst the most enchanting tropical 
scenery and vegetation, that I was so anxious to see. 
Michael Scott, both in Tom Cringle and The Cruise 
of the Midge, gave the most alluring pictures of 
Creole society (a Creole does not mean a coloured 
person; any one born in the West Indies of pure white 
parents is a Creole) ; they certainly seemed to get 
drunk more than was necessary, yet the impression 
left on one's mind was not unlike that produced by 
the purely fictitious Ireland of Charles Lever's novels : 
one continual round of junketing, feasting, and prac- 
tical jokes; and what gave the pictures additional 
piquancy was the knowledge that death was all the 
while peeping round the corner, and that Yellow Jack 
might at any moment touch one of these light-hearted 
revellers with his burning finger-tips. 

Lady Nugent, wife of Sir George Nugent, Gov- 
ernor of Jamaica from 1801 to 1806, kept a volumi- 
nous diary during her stay in the island, and most ex- 
cellent reading it makes. She was thus rather anterior 
in date to Michael Scott, but their descriptions tally 
very closely. I shall have a good deal to say about 
Lady Nugent. 

The West Indies make an appeal of a different 
nature to all Britons. They were the training-ground 
and school of all the great British Admirals from 
Drake to Nelson. Benbow died of his wounds at Port 
Royal in Jamaica, and was buried in Kingston Parish 
Church in 1702, whilst Rodney's memory is still so 
cherished by West Indians, white and coloured alike, 



106 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

that serious riots broke out when his statue was re- 
moved from Spanish Town to Kingston, and his effigy 
had eventually to be placed in the memorial temple 
which grateful Spanish Town erected to commem- 
orate his great victory over de Grasse off Dominica 
on April 12, 1782, as the result of which the Lesser 
Antilles remained British instead of French. For all 
these reasons I had experienced, since the age of 
thirteen, an intense longing to see these lovely islands 
with all their historic associations. 

In 1884 I travelled from Buenos Ayres to Canada 
in a tramp steamer simply and solely because she was 
advertised to call at Barbados and Jamaica. Never 
shall I forget my first night in that tramp. I soon 
became conscious of uninvited guests in my bunk, so, 
striking a light (strictly against rules in the ships of 
those days), I discovered regiments and army corps 
of noisome, crawling vermin marching in serried ranks 
into my bunk under the impression that it was their 
parade ground. For the remainder of the voyage I 
slept on the saloon table, a hard but cleanly couch. 
We lay for a week at Rio de Janeiro loading coffee, 
and we touched at Bahia and at Pernambudb. At 
this latter place as at Rio an epidemic of yellow fever 
was raging, so we had not got a clean bill-of -health. 
As the blunt-nosed tramp pushed her leisurely way 
northward through the oily ultra-marine expanse of 
tropical seas, I thought longingly of the green island 
for which we were heading. We reached Carlisle Bay, 
Barbados, at daybreak on a glorious June morning, 
and waited impatiently in the roadstead (there is no 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 107 

harbour in Barbados) for the liberating visit of the 
medical officer from the shore. He arrived, gave one 
glance at our bill-of-health, and sternly refused pra- 
tique, so the hateful yellow flag remained fluttering 
at the fore in the Trade wind, announcing to all and 
sundry that we were cut off from all communication 
with the shore. Never was there a more aggravating 
situation ! Barbados, all emerald green after the rainy 
season, looked deliciously enticing from the ship. The 
"flamboyant" trees, Poncicma Eegia, were in full 
bloom, making great patches of vivid scarlet round the 
Savannah. The houses and villas peeping out of 
luxuriant tangles of tropical vegetation had a delight- 
fully home-like look to eyes accustomed for two years 
to South American surroundings. Seen through a 
glass from the ship's deck, the Public Buildings in 
Trafalgar Square, solid and substantial, had all the 
unimaginative neatness of any prosaic provincial town- 
hall at home. We were clearly no longer in a Latin- 
American country. It was really a piece of England 
translated to the Caribbean Sea, and we few pas- 
sengers, some of whom had not seen England for 
many weary years, were forbidden to set foot on this 
outpost of home. It was most exasperating; for never 
did any island look more inviting, and surely such 
dazzling white houses, such glowing red roofs, such 
vivid greenery, and so absurdly blue a sea, had never 
been seen in conjunction before. Barbados is almost 
exactly the size of the Isle of Wight, but in spite of 
its restricted area, all the Barbadians, both white 
and coloured, have the most exalted opinion of their 



108 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

island, which in those days they lovingly termed "Bim- 
shire," white Barbadians being then known as "Bims." 
Students of Marryat will remember how Mr. Apollo 
Johnson, at Miss Betty Austin's coloured "Dignity 
ball," declared that "AH de world fight against Eng- 
land, but England nebber fear; King George nebber 
fear while Barbados 'tand 'tiff," and something of 
that sentiment persists still to-day. As a youngster 
I used to laugh till I cried at the rebuff administered 
to Peter Simple by Miss Minerva at the same "Dig- 
nity ball." Peter was carving a turkey, and asked 
his swarthy partner whether he might send her a slice 
of the breast. Shocked at such coarseness, the dusky 
but delicate damsel simpered demurely, "Sar, I take 
a lily piece turkey bosom, if you please." Dignity 
balls are still held in Barbados; they are rather trying 
to one of the senses. In the "eighties" it was a point 
of honour amongst "Bims" to wear on all and every 
occasion a high black silk hat. During our enforced 
quarantine we saw a number of white Bims sailing 
little yachts about the roadstead, every single man of 
them crowned with a high silk hat, about the most 
uncomfortable head-gear imaginable for sailing in. 
Another agreeable home-touch was to hear the negro 
boatmen all talking to each other in English. Their 
speech may not have been melodious, but it fell pleas- 
antly enough on ears accustomed for so long to hear 
nothing but Spanish. From my intimate acquaintance 
with Marryat, even the jargon of the negro boat- 
men struck me with a delightful sense of familiarity, 
as did the very place-names, Needham Point and 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 109 

Carlisle Bay. I was fated not to see Barbados again 
for twenty-two years. 

In the early part of the eighteenth century a French 
missionary, one Father Labat, visited Barbados and 
gave the most glowing account of it to his countrymen. 
According to him the island was brimful of wealth, 
and the jewellers' and silversmiths' shops in Bridge- 
town rivalled those of Paris. I should be inclined to 
question Father Labat's strict veracity. This worthy 
priest declared that the planters lived in sumptuous 
houses, superbly furnished, that their dinners lasted 
four hours, and their tables were crowded with gold 
and silver plate. The statement as to the length 
of the planters' dinners is probably an accurate one, 
for I myself have been the recipient of Barbadian 
hospitality, and had never before even imagined such 
an endless procession of fish, flesh, and fowl, not to 
mention turtle, land-craos, and pepper-pot. West 
Indian negresses seem to have a natural gift for cook- 
ing, though their cuisine is a very highly spiced and 
full-flavoured one. 

Father Labat's motive in drawing so glorified a pic- 
ture of Barbados peeps out at the end of his account, 
for he drily remarks that the fortifications of the 
island were most inadequate, and that it could easily 
be captured by the French; he was clearly making 
an appeal to his countrymen's cupidity. 

Upon making the acquaintance of Bridgetown some 
twenty years after my first quarantine visit, I can 
hardly endorse Father Labat's opinion that the streets 
are strikingly handsome, for Bridgetown, like most 



110 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

British West Indian towns, looks as though all the 
houses were built of cards or paper. It is, however, 
a bright, cheery little spot, seems prosperous enough, 
and has its own Trafalgar Square, decorated with its 
own very fine statue of Nelson. Every house both in 
Jamaica and Barbados is fitted with sash-windows 
in the English style. This fidelity to the customs of 
the motherland is very touching but hardly practical, 
for in the burning climate of the West Indies every 
available breath of fresh air is welcome. With French 
windows, the entire window-space can be opened ; with 
sashes, one-half of the window remains necessarily 
blocked. 

Let strangers beware of "Barbados Green Bitters." 
It is a most comforting local cocktail, apparently quite 
innocuous. It is not; under its silkiness it is abomi- 
nably potent. One "green bitter" is food, two are 
dangerous. 

In St. John's churchyard, some fourteen miles from 
Bridgetown, is to be seen one of the most striking ex- 
amples of the vanity of human greatness. A stone 
reproduction of the porch of a Greek temple bears 
this inscription, 

HERE LYETH YE BODY OF 

FERDINANDO PALEOLOGOS 

DESCENDED FROM YE IMPERIAL LYNE 

OF YE LAST CHRISTIAN 

EMPERORS OF GREECE 

CHURCHWARDEN OF THIS PARISH 

1655 - 1656 

VESTRYMAN TWENTY YEARS 
DIED OCTOBER 3, 1678. 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 111 

Just think of it ! The last descendant of Constantine, 
the last scion of the proud Emperors of Byzantium, 
commemorated as vestryman and churchwarden of 
a country parish in a little, unknown island in the 
Caribbean, only then settled for seventy-three years! 
Could any preacher quote a more striking instance of 
"sic transit gloria mundi"? 

Codrington College, not far from St. John's church, 
is rather a surprise. Few people would expect to 
come across a little piece of Oxford in a tropical island, 
or to find a college building over two hundred years 
old in Barbados, complete with hall and chapel. The 
facade of Codrington is modelled on either Queen's 
or the New Buildings at Magdalen, Oxford, and the 
college is affiliated to Durham University. Originally 
intended as a place of education for the sons of white 
planters it is now wholly given over to coloured stu- 
dents. It can certainly claim the note of the unex- 
pected, and the quiet eighteenth-century dignity of 
its architecture is enhanced by the broad lake which 
fronts it, and by the exceedingly pretty tropical park 
in which it stands. Codrington boasts some splendid 
specimens of the "Royal" palm, the Palmiste of the 
French, which is one of the glories of West Indian 
scenery. 

Though Father Labat may have drawn the long- 
bow intentionally, some of the country houses erected 
by the sugar planters in the heyday of the colony's 
riotous prosperity are really very fine indeed, although 
at present they have mostly changed hands, or been 
left derelict. Long Bay Castle, now unoccupied, is 



112 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

a most ambitious building, with marble stairs, beauti- 
ful plaster ceilings, and some of its original Chippen- 
dale furniture still remaining. A curious feature of 
all these Barbadian houses is the hurricane-wing, built 
of extra strength and fitted with iron shutters, into 
which all the family locked themselves when the fall 
of the barometer announced the approach of a hur- 
ricane. I was shown one hurricane-wing which had 
successfully withstood two centuries of these visita- 
tions. 

Barbados is the only ugly island of the West Indian 
group, for every available foot is planted with sugar- 
cane, and the unbroken, undulating sea of green is 
monotonous. In the hilly portions, however, there 
are some very attractive bits of scenery. 

On my first visit, as I have already said, I saw 
nothing of all this, except through glasses from the 
deck of a tramp. I was also to be denied a sight of 
Jamaica, for the Captain knew that he would be re- 
fused pratique there, and settled to steam direct to 
the Danish island of St. Thomas, where quarantine 
regulations were less strict, so all my voyage was 
for nothing. 

Not for over twenty years after was I to make the 
acquaintance of Kingston and Port Royal and the 
Palisadoes, all very familiar names to me from my 
constant reading of Marryat and Michael Scott. 

I suppose that every one draws mental pictures of 
places that they have constantly heard about, and that 
most people have noticed how invariably the real place 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 113 

is not only totally different from the fancy picture, 
but almost aggressively so. 

I have already mentioned Lady Nugent's journal 
or "Jamaica in 1801." I am persuaded that she must 
have been a most delightful little creature. She was 
very tiny, as she tells us herself, and had brown curly 
hair. She was a little coy about her age, which she 
confided to no one; by her own directions, it was 
omitted even from her tombstone, but from internal 
evidence we know that when her husband, Sir George 
Nugent, was appointed Governor of Jamaica on April 
1, 1801 (how sceptical he must have been at first as 
to the genuineness of this appointment! One can 
almost hear him ejaculating "Quite so. You don't 
make an April fool of me!"), she was either thirty 
or thirty-one years old. Lady Nugent was as great 
an adept as Mrs. Fairchild, of revered memory, at 
composing long prayers, every one of which she enters 
in eootenso in her diary, but not only was there a de- 
lightful note of feminine coquetry about her, but she 
also possessed a keen sense of humour, two engaging 
attributes in which, I fear, that poor Mrs. Fairchild 
was lamentably lacking. 

Lady Nugent and her husband sailed out to 
Jamaica in a man-of-war, H.M.S. Ambuscade, in 
June, 1801. As Sir George Nugent had been from 
1799 to 1801 Adjutant-General in Ireland, this name 
must have had quite a home-like sound to him. We 
read in Lady Nugent's diary of June 25, 1801, after 
a lengthy supplication for protection against the perils 
of the deep, the following charmingly feminine note : 



114 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

"My nightcaps are so smart that I wear them all day, 
for to tell the truth I really think I look better in my 
nightcap than in my bonnet, and as I am surrounded 
by men who do not know a nightcap from a daycap, it 
is no matter what I do." Dear little thing! I am 
sure she looked too sweet in them. They sailed from 
Cork on June 5, and reached Barbados on July 17, 
which seems a quick voyage. They stayed one night 
at an inn in Bridgetown, and gave a dinner-party for 
which the bill was over sixty pounds. This strikes 
quite a modern note, and might really have been in 
post-war days instead of in 1801. 

Lady Nugent found the society in Jamaica, both 
that of officials and of planters and their wives, in- 
tensely uncongenial to her. "Nothing is ever talked 
of in this horrid island but the price of sugar. The 
only other topics of conversation are debt, disease and 
death." She was much shocked at the low standard 
of morality prevailing amongst the white men in the 
colony, and disgusted at the perpetual gormandising 
and drunkenness. The frequent deaths from yellow 
fever amongst her acquaintance, and the terrible 
rapidity with which Yellow Jack slew, depressed her 
dreadfully, and she was startled at the callous fashion 
in which people, hardened by many years' experience 
of the scourge, received the news of the death of their 
most intimate friends. She was perpetually com- 
plaining of the unbearable heat, to which she never 
got acclimatised; she suffered "sadly" from the mos- 
quitoes, and never could get used to earthquakes, 
hurricanes, or scorpions. 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 115 

With these exceptions, she seems to have liked 
Jamaica very well. It must have been an extraor- 
dinary community, and to understand it we must re- 
member the conditions prevailing. Bryan Edwards, 
in his History of the British West Indies, published in 
1793, called them "the principal source of the national 
opulence and maritime power of England" ; and with- 
out the stream of wealth pouring into Great Britain 
from Barbados and Jamaica, the long struggle with 
France would have been impossible. 

The term "as rich as a West Indian" was pro- 
verbial, and in 1803 the West Indies were accountable 
for one-third of the imports and exports of Great 
Britain. 

The price of sugar in 1803 was fifty-two shillings 
a hundredweight. Wealth was pouring into the island 
and into the pockets of the planters. Lady Nugent 
constantly alludes to sugar estates worth £20,000 or 
£30,000 a year. These planters were six weeks dis- 
tant from England, and, except during the two years' 
respite which followed the Treaty of Amiens, Great 
Britain had been intermittently at war with either 
France or Spain during the whole of the eighteenth 
century. The preliminary articles of peace between 
France and Britain were signed on October 1, 1801, 
the Peace of Amiens itself on March 27, 1802, 
but in July, 1803, hostilities between the two countries 
were again renewed. All this meant that communica- 
tions between the colony and the motherland were 
very precarious. Nominally a mail-packet sailed from 
Jamaica once a month, but the seas were swarming 



116 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

with! swift-sailing French and Spanish privateers, 
hanging about the trade-routes on the chance of cap- 
turing West Indiamen with their rich cargoes, so 
the mail-packets had to wait till a convoy assembled, 
and were then escorted home by men-of-war. This 
entailed the increasing isolation of the white commu- 
nity in Jamaica, who, in their outlook on life, retained 
the eighteenth-century standpoint. Now the eigh- 
teenth century was a thoroughly gross and material 
epoch. People had a pretty taste in clothes, and a 
nice feeling for good architecture, graceful furniture, 
and artistic house decoration, but this was a veneer 
only, and under the veneer lay an ingrained grossness 
of mind, just as the gorgeous satins and dainty bro- 
cades covered dirty, unwashed bodies. Even the com- 
plexions of the women were artificial to mask the 
defects of a sparing use of soap and water, and they 
drenched themselves with perfumes to hide the un- 
pleasant effects of this lack of bodily cleanliness. On 
the surface hyper-refinement, glitter and show; be- 
neath it a crude materialism and an ingrained gross- 
ness of temperament. What else could be expected 
when all the men got drunk as a matter of course 
almost every night of their lives? Over the coarsest 
description of wood lay a very highly polished veneer 
of satin-wood, which might possibly deceive the eye, 
but once scratch the paper-thin veneer and the ugly 
under-surface was at once apparent. Money rolled 
into the pockets of these Jamaican planters ; there is 
but little sport possible in the island, and they had 
no intellectual pursuits, so they just built fine houses, 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 117 

filled them with rare china, Chippendale furniture, 
and silver plate, and found their amusements in eat- 
ing, drinking and gambling. 

Even to-day the climate of Jamaica is very ener- 
vating. Wise people know now that to keep in health 
in hot countries alcohol, and wine especially, must be 
avoided. Meat must be eaten very sparingly, and an 
abstemious regime will bring its own reward. In the 
eighteenth century, however, people apparently 
thought that vast quantities of food and drink would 
combat the debilitating effects of the climate, and 
that, too, at a time when yellow fever was endemic. 
There are still old-fashioned people who are obsessed 
with the idea that the more you eat the stronger you 
grow. The Creoles in Jamaica certainly put this 
theory into effect. Michael Scott, in Tom Cringle, 
describes many Gargantuan repasts amongst the 
Kingston merchants, and as he himself was one of 
them, we can presume he knew what he was writing 
about. The men, too, habitually drank, of all bever- 
ages in the world to select in the scorching heat of 
Jamaica, hot brandy and water, and then they won- 
dered that they died of yellow fever! Every white 
man and woman in the island seems to have been 
gorged with food. It was really a case of "let us eat 
and drink, for to-morrow we die"; but if they hadn't 
eaten and drunk so enormously, presumably they 
would not have died so rapidly. 

Lady Nugent was much disgusted with this gor- 
mandising. On page 78 of her journal she says, "I 
don't wonder now at the fever the people suffer from 



118 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

here — such eating and drinking I never saw! Such 
loads of rich and highly-seasoned things, and really 
the gallons of wine and mixed liquors that they drink ! 
I observed some of our party to-day eat at breakfast 
as if they had never eaten before. A dish of tea, 
another of coffee, a bumper of claret, another large 
one of hock-negus; then Madeira, sangaree, hot and 
cold meats, stews and pies, hot and cold fish pickled 
and plain, peppers, ginger-sweetmeats, acid fruit, 
sweet jellies — in short, it was all as astonishing as it 
was disgusting." 

It really does seem a fair allowance for a simple 
morning meal. l 

The life of a Governor of Jamaica is now prin- 
cipally taken up with quiet administrative work, but 
in 1802 he was supposed to hold a succession of re- 
views, to give personal audiences, endless balls and 
dinners, to make tours of inspection round the island ; 
and, in addition, as ex officio Chancellor of Jamaica, 
it was his duty to preside at all the sittings of the 
Court of Chancery. During their many tours of in- 
spection poor little Lady Nugent complains that, with 
the best wishes in the world, she really could not eat 
five large meals a day. She continues (page 95), 
"At the Moro to-day, our dinner at 6 was really so 
profuse that it is worth describing. The first course 
was of fish, with an entire jerked hog in the centre, 
and a black crab pepper-pot. The second course was 
of turtle, mutton, beef, turkey, goose, ducks, chicken, 
capons, ham, tongue, and crab patties. The third 
course was of sweets and fruits of all kinds. I felt 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 119 

quite sick, what with the heat and such a profusion 
of eatables." 

One wonders what those planters' weekly bills 
would have amounted to at the present-day scale of 
prices, and can no longer feel surprised at their all 
running into debt, in spite of their huge incomes. The 
drinking, too, was on the same scale. Lady Nugent 
remarks (page 108), "I am not astonished at the 
general ill-health of the men in this country, for they 
really eat like cormorants and drink like porpoises. 
All the men of our party got drunk to-night, even to a 
boy of fifteen, who was obliged to be carried home." 
Tom Cringle, in his account of a dinner-party in Cuba, 
remarks airily, "We, the males of the party, had 
drunk little or nothing, a bottle of claret or so apiece, 
a dram of brandy, and a good deal of vin-de-grave 
(sic) ," and he really thinks that nothing: moderation 
itself in that sweltering climate ! 

In spite of her disgust at the immense amount of 
food devoured round her, Lady Nugent seems to have 
adopted a Jamaican scale of diet for her children, 
for when she returned to England with them in the 
Augustus Ocesar in 1805, she gives the following ac- 
count of the day's routine on board the ship. It must 
be observed that George, the elder child, was not yet 
three, and that Louisa was under two. "When I 
awake, the old steward brings me a dish of ginger tea. 
I then dress, and breakfast with the children. At 
eleven the children have biscuits, and some port wine 
and water. George eats some chicken or mutton at 
twelve, and at two they each have a bowl of strong 



120 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

soup. At four we all dine ; I go to my cabin at half- 
past seven, and soon after eight I am always in bed 
and the babies fast asleep. The old steward then 
comes to my bedside with a large tumbler of porter 
with a toast in it. I eat the toast, drink the porter, and 
usually rest well." 

Those two unfortunate children must have landed 
in England two miniature Daniel Lamberts. It is 
pleasant to learn that little George lived to the age of 
ninety. Had he not been so stuffed with food in his 
youth, he would probably have been a centenarian. 

During Nugent's term of office events in Haiti, or 
San Domingo, as it was still called then, occasioned 
him great anxiety. Before the outbreak of the French 
Revolution in 1789, Haiti had been the most prosper- 
ous and the most highly civilised of the West Indian 
islands. But after the French National Assembly 
had, in 1791, decreed equal rights between whites and 
mulattoes, troubles began. The blacks rebelled; the 
French rescinded the decree of 1791 and, changing 
their minds again, re-affirmed it. The blacks began 
murdering and plundering the whites, and many 
planters emigrated to Jamaica and the United States. 
That most extraordinary man, Toussaint l'Ouverture, 
a pure negro, who had been born a slave, re-estab- 
lished some form of order in Haiti until Napoleon, 
when the preliminary articles of the Peace of Amiens 
had been signed between Britain and France, hit upon 
the idea of employing his soldiers in Haiti, and sent 
out his brother-in-law, General Le Clerc, with 25,000 
French soldiers to re-conquer the island. It was a 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 121 

most ill-fated expedition; the soldiers could not with- 
stand the climate, and died like flies; France losing, 
from first to last, no less than 40,000 men from yellow 
fever. In 1802, Le Clerc, who seems to have been a 
great scoundrel, died, and in 1804 Haiti declared her 
independence. 

After the Peace of Amiens the French Govern- 
ment were exceedingly anxious to secure the co- 
operation of British troops from Jamaica, seasoned 
to the climate, in restoring order in Haiti, and even 
offered to cede them such portions of Haiti as were 
willing to come under the British flag. During the 
ten months of General Le Clerc's administration of 
Haiti he was perpetually sending envoys to General 
Nugent in Jamaica, and continually offering him 
presents. It is not uncharitable to suppose that these 
presents were proffered with a view of winning Nu- 
gent's support to the idea of a British expedition to 
Haiti. Nugent, however, sternly refused all these 
gifts. Madame Le Clerc, Napoleon's sister, who is 
better known as the beautiful Princess Pauline Bor- 
ghese, a lady with an infinity of admirers, was far 
more subtle in her methods. Her presents to Lady 
Nugent took the irresistible form of dresses of the 
latest Parisian fashion, and were eagerly accepted 
by that volatile little lady. Indeed, for ten months 
she seems to have been entirely dressed by Madame 
Le Clerc, who even provided little George Nugent's 
christening robe of white muslin, heavily embroidered 
in gold. Ladies may be interested in Lady Nugent's 
account of her various dresses. "Last night at the ball 



122 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

I wore a new dress of purple crape, embroidered and 
heavily spangled in gold, given me by Madame Le 
Clerc. The skirt rather short; the waist very high. 
On my head I wore a wreath of gilded bay-leaves, and 
must have looked like a Roman Empress. I think 
that purple suits me, for every one declared that they 
never saw me looking better." Dear little lady! I 
am sure that she never did, and that the piquant little 
face on the frontispiece, with its roguish eyes, looked 
charming under her gold wreath. Again, "I wore 
a lovely dress of pink crape spangled in silver, sent 
me by Madame Le Clerc." She gives a fuller account 
of her dress at the great ball given her to celebrate her 
recovery after the birth of her son (Dec. 30, 1802). 

"For the benefit of posterity I will describe my 
dress on this grand occasion. A crape dress, embroid- 
ered in silver spangles, also sent me by Madame Le 
Clerc, but much richer than that which I wore at the 
last ball. Scarcely any sleeves to my dress, but a 
broad silver spangled border to the shoulder-straps. 
The body made very like a child's frock, tying behind, 
and the skirt round, with not much train. On my 
head a turban of spangled crape like the dress, looped- 
up with pearls. This dress, the admiration of all the 
world over, will, perhaps, fifty years hence, be laughed 
at, and considered as ridiculous as our grandmothers' 
hoops and brocades appear to us now." 

In fairness it must be stated that General Nugent 
punctiliously returned all Madame Le Clerc's pres- 
ents to his wife with gifts of English cut-glass, then 
apparently much appreciated by the French. He 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 123 

seems to have sent absolute cart-loads of cut-glass to 
Haiti, but in days when men habitually drank two 
bottles of wine apiece after dinner, there was presum- 
ably a fair amount of breakage of decanters and 
tumblers. 

I notice that although Lady Nugent complains on 
almost every page of "the appalling heat," the "un- 
bearable heat," the "terrific heat, which gives me these 
sad headaches," she seems always ready to dance for 
hours at any time. Some idea of the ceremonious 
manners of the day is obtained from the perpetual 
entry "went to bed with my knees aching from the 
hundreds of curtsies I have had to make to the com- 
pany." 

In 1811 Sir George Nugent was appointed Com- 
mander-in-Chief in Bengal, and their voyage from 
Portsmouth to Calcutta occupied exactly six months, 
yet there are people who grumble at the mails now 
taking eighteen days to traverse the distance be- 
tween London and Calcutta. 

Lady Nugent was much shocked at the universal 
habit of smoking amongst Europeans in the East In- 
dies. She sternly refused to allow their two aides- 
de-camp to smoke, "for as they are both only twenty- 
five, they are too young to begin so odious a custom," 
an idea which will amuse the fifteen-year-olds of to- 
day. 

Not till 1906 did I find myself sailing into Kings- 
ton Harbour and actually set eyes on Port Royal, the 
Palisadoes, and Fort Augusta, all very familiar by 
name to me since my boyhood. 



124 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

I had taken the trip to shake off a prolonged bron- 
chial attack; a young Guardsman, a friend of mine, 
though my junior by many years, was convalescent 
after an illness, and was also recommended a sunbath, 
so we travelled together. The hotels being all full, we 
took up our quarters in a small boarding-house, stand- 
ing in dense groves of orange trees, where each shiver 
of the night breeze sent the branches of the orange 
trees swish-swishing, and wafted great breaths of the 
delicious fragrance of orange blossom into our rooms. 
I was in bed, when the Guardsman, who had never 
been in the tropics before, rushed terror-stricken into 
my room. "I have drunk nothing whatever," he fal- 
tered, "but I must be either very drunk or else mad, 
for I keep fancying that my room is full of moving 
electric lights." I went into his room, where I found 
some half-dozen of the peculiarly brilliant Jamaican 
fireflies cruising about. The Guardsman refused at 
first to believe that any insect could produce so bright 
a light, and bemoaned the loss of his mental faculties, 
until I caught a firefly and showed him its two lamps 
gleaming like miniature motor head-lights. 

Some pictures stand out startlingly clear-cut in the 
memory. Such a one is the recollection of our first 
morning in Jamaica. The Guardsman, full of curi- 
osity to see something of the mysterious tropical island 
into which we had been deposited after nightfall, 
awoke me at daybreak. After landing from the mail- 
steamer in the dark, we had had merely impressions of 
oven-like heat, and of a long, dim-lit drive in endless 
suburbs of flimsily built, wooden houses, through the 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 125 

spice-scented, hot, black-velvet night, enlivened with 
almost indecently intimate glimpses into humble in- 
teriors, where swarthy dark forms jabbered and ges- 
ticulated, clustered round smoky oil-lamps; and as 
the suburbs gave place to the open country, the vast 
leaves of unfamiliar growths stood out, momentarily 
silhouetted against the blackness by the gleam of our 
carriage lamps. 

It being so early, the Guardsman and I went out 
as we were, in pyjamas and slippers, with, of course, 
sufficient head protection against the fierce sun. Just 
a fortnight before we had left England under snow, 
in the grip of a black frost; London had been veiled 
in incessant thick fogs for ten days, and we had 
fallen straight into the most exquisitely beautiful 
island on the face of the globe, bathed in perpetual 
summer. 

When we had traversed the grove of orange trees, 
we came upon a lovely little sunk-garden, where beds 
of carinas, orange, sulphur, and scarlet, blazed round 
a marble fountain, with a silvery jet splashing and 
leaping into the sunshine. The sunk-garden was sur- 
rounded on three sides by a pergola, heavily draped 
with yellow alamandas, drifts of wine-coloured bou- 
gainvillaea, and pale-blue solanums, the size of saucers. 
In the clear morning light it really looked entranc- 
ingly lovely. On the fourth side the garden ended in 
a terrace dominating the entire Liguanea plain, with 
the city of Kingston, Kingston Harbour, Port Royal, 
and the hills on the far side spread out below us like 
a map. Those hills are now marked on the Ordnance 



126 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

Survey as the "Healthshire Hills." This is a modern 
euphemism, for the name originally given to those 
hills and the district round them by the soldiers sta- 
tioned in the "Apostles' Battery," was "Hellshire," 
and any one who has had personal experience of the 
heat there, can hardly say that the title is inappro- 
priate. From our heights, even Kingston itself looked 
inviting, an impression not confirmed by subsequent 
visits to that unlovely town. The long, sickle-shape 
sandspit of the Palisadoes separated Kingston Har- 
bour on one side from the blue waters of the Carib- 
bean Sea; on the other side the mangrove swamps of 
the Rio Cobre made unnaturally vivid patches of 
emerald green against the background of hills. On 
railways a green flag denotes that caution must be ob- 
served ; the vivid green of the mangroves is Nature's 
caution-flag to the white man, for where the man- 
grove flourishes, there fever lurks. 

The whole scene was so wonderfully beautiful under 
the blazing sunlight, and in the crystal-clear atmos- 
phere, that the Guardsman refused to accept it as 
genuine. "It can't be real!" he cried, "this is Janu- 
ary. We have got somehow into a pantomime trans- 
formation scene. In a minute it will go, and I shall 
wake up in Wellington Barracks to find it freezing 
like mad, with my owl of a servant telling me that 
I have to be on parade in five minutes." This lengthy 
warrior showed, too, a childish incredulity when I 
pointed out to him cocoa-nuts hanging on the palms ; 
a field of growing pineapples below us, or great clus- 
ters of fruit on the banana trees. Pineapples, cocoa- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 127 

nuts, and bananas were bought in shops; they did 
not grow on trees. He would insist that the great 
orange flowers, the size of cabbages, on the Brownea 
trees were artificial, as were the big blue trumpets of 
the Morning Glories. He was in reality quite intoxi- 
cated with the novelty and the glamour of his first 
peep into the tropics. By came fluttering a great, 
gorgeous butterfly, the size of a saucer, and after it 
rushed the Guardsman, shedding slippers around 
him as his long legs bent to their task. He might just 
as well have attempted to catch the Scotch Express; 
but, as he returned to me dripping, he began to realise 
what the heat of Jamaica can do. All the remainder 
of that day the Guardsman remained under the spell 
of the entrancing beauty of his new surroundings, and 
I was dragged on foot for miles and miles; along 
country lanes, through the Hope Botanical Gardens, 
down into the deep ravine of the Hope River, then 
back again, both of us dripping wet in the fierce 
heat, in spite of our white drill suits, larding the 
ground as we walked, oozing from every pore, but 
always urged on and on by my enthusiastic young 
friend, who, suffering from a paucity of epithets, kept 
up monotonous ejaculations of "How absolutely 
d d lovely it all is!" every two minutes. 

I had to remain a full hour in the swimming-bath 
after my exertions; and the Guardsman had quite 
determined by night-time to "send in his papers," and 
settle down as a coffee-planter in this enchanting 
island. 

It is curious that although the Spaniards held 



128 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

Jamaica for one hundred and sixty-one years, no trace 
of the Spaniard in language, customs, or architecture 
is left in the island, for Spain has generally left her 
permanent impress on all countries occupied by her, 
and has planted her language and her customs defi- 
nitely in them. The one exception as regards Jamaica 
is found in certain place-names such as Ocho Rios, 
Rio Grande, and Rio Cobre, but as these are all pro- 
nounced in the English fashion, the music of the 
Spanish names is lost. Not one word of any language 
but English (of a sort) is now heard in the colony. 
When Columbus discovered the island in 1494, he 
called it Santiago, St. James being the patron saint 
of Spain, but the native name of Xaymaca (which 
being interpreted means "the land of springs") per- 
sisted somehow, and really there are enough San- 
tiagos already dotted about in Spanish-speaking coun- 
tries, without further additions to them. When Ad- 
miral Penn and General Venables were sent out by 
Cromwell to break the Spanish power in the West 
Indies, they succeeded in capturing Jamaica in 1655, 
and British the island has remained ever since. To 
this day the arms of Jamaica are Cromwell's arms 
slightly modified, and George V is not King, but 
"Supreme Lord of Jamaica," the original title as- 
sumed by Cromwell. The fine statue of Queen Vic- 
toria in Kingston is inscribed "Queen of Great Britain 
and Ireland, Empress of India, and Supreme Lady 
of Jamaica." 

Venables found that the Spaniards, craving for yet 
another Santiago, had called the capital of the island 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 129 

Santiago de la Vega, "St. James of the Plain," and 
to this day the official name of Spanish Town, the 
old capital, is St. Jago de Vega, and as such is in- 
scribed on all the milestones, only as it is pronounced 
in the English fashion, it is now one of the ugliest 
names imaginable. The wonderfully beautiful gorge 
of the Rio Cobre, above Spanish Town, was called by 
the conquistadores "Spouting Waters," or Bocas de 
Agua. This has been Anglicised into the hideous 
name of Bog Walk, just as the "High Waters," 
Agua Alta, on the north side of the island, has be- 
come the Wagwater River. The Spanish forms seem 
preferable to me. 

Some one has truly said that the old Spaniards 
shared all the coral insect's mania for building. As 
soon as they had conquered a place, they set to work 
to build a great cathedral, and simultaneously, the 
church then being distinctly militant, a large and 
solid fort. They then proceeded to erect massive 
walls and ramparts round their new settlement, and 
most of these ramparts are surviving to-day. We, 
in true British haphazard style, did not build for 
posterity, but allowed ramshackle towns to spring up 
anyhow without any attempt at design or plan. There 
are many things we could learn from the Spanish. 
Their solid, dignified cities of massive stone houses 
with deep, heavy arcades into which the sun never 
penetrates; their broad plazas where cool fountains 
spout under great shade-trees; their imposing over- 
ornate churches, their general look of solid perma- 
nence, put to shame our flimsy, ephemeral, planless 



130 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

British West Indian towns of match-boarding and 
white paint. We seldom look ahead : they always did. 
Added to which it would be, of course, too much 
trouble to lay out towns after definite designs; it is 
much easier to let them grow up anyhow. On the 
other hand, the British colonial towns have all good 
water supplies, and efficient systems of sewerage, 
which atones in some degree for their architectural 
shortcomings; whilst the Spaniard would never dream 
of bothering his head about sanitation, and would be 
content with a very inadequate water supply. Pro- 
vided that he had sufficient water for the public foun- 
tains, the Spaniard would not trouble about a domes- 
I tic supply. The Briton contrives an ugly town in 
which you can live in reasonable health and comfort; 
the Spaniard fashions a most picturesque city in which 
you are extremely like to die. Racial ideals differ. 



CHAPTER V 

An election meeting in Jamaica — Two family experiences at 
contested elections — Novel South African methods — Un- 
attractive Kingston — A driving tour through the island — 
The Guardsman as orchid hunter — Derelict country houses 
— An attempt to reconstruct the past — The Fourth-Form 
Room at Harrow — Elizabethan Harrovians — I meet many 
friends of my youth — The "Sunday" books of the 'sixties — 
"Black and White" — Arrival of the French Fleet — Its 
inner meaning — International courtesies — A delicate atten- 
tion — Absent alligators — The mangrove swamp — A prepos- 
terous suggestion — The swamps do their work — Fever — A 
very gallant apprentice — What he did. 

The Guardsman's enthusiasm about Jamaica re- 
maining unabated, I determined to hire a buggy and 
pair and to make a fortnight's leisurely tour of the 
North Coast and centre of the island. Though not 
peculiarly expeditious, this is a very satisfactory mode 
of travel; no engine troubles, no burst tyres, and no 
worries about petrol supplies. (A new country can 
be seen and absorbed far more easily from a horse- 
drawn vehicle than from a hurrying motor-carAand 
the little country inns in Jamaica, though very plainly 
equipped, are, as a rule, excellent, with surprisingly 
good if somewhat novel food. 

As the member for St. Andrews in the local Leg- 
islative Council had just died, an election was being 
held in Kingston. Curious as to what an election- 
meeting in Jamaica might be like, we attended one. 
The hall was very small, and densely packed with 

131 



132 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

people, and the suffocating heat drove us away after 
a quarter of an hour; but never have I, in so short 
a space of time, heard such violent personalities hurled 
from a public platform, although I have had a certain 
amount of experience of contested elections. In 1868, 
when I was eleven years old, I was in Londonderry 
City when my brother Claud, the sitting member, was 
opposed by Mr. Serjeant Dowse, afterwards Baron 
Dowse, the last of the Irish "Barons of the Ex- 
chequer." Party feeling ran very high indeed; when- 
ever a body of Dowse's supporters met my brother 
in the street, they commenced singing in chorus, to 
a popular tune of the day: 

"Dowse for iver ! Claud in the river ! 
With a skiver through his liver." 

Whilst my brother's adherents greeted Dowse in pub- 
lic with a sort of monotonous chant to these elegant 
words : 

"Dowse! Dowse! you're a dirty louse, 
And ye'll niver sit in the Commons' House." 

It will be noticed that this is in the same rhythm 
that Mark Twain made so popular some twenty years 
later in his conductor's song. 

"Punch, brothers, punch with care, 
Punch in the presence of the passen-jare." 

In spite of the confident predictions of my brother's 
followers, Dowse won the seat by a small majority, 
nor did my brother succeed in unseating him after- 
wards on Petition. 

Another occasion on which feeling ran very high 
was in Middlesex during the 1874 election. Here 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 133 

my brother George was the Conservative candidate, 
and owing to his having played cricket for Harrow 
at Lord's, he was supported enthusiastically by the 
whole school, the Harrow masters being at that time 
Liberals almost to a man. My tutor, a prominent 
local Liberal, must have been enormously gratified 
at finding the exterior of his house literally plas- 
tered from top to bottom with crimson placards 
(crimson is the Conservative colour in Middlesex) all 
urging the electors to "vote for Hamilton the proved 
Friend of the People." Possibly fraternal affection 
may have had something to do with this crimson out- 
burst. My youngest brother took, as far as his 
limited opportunities allowed him, an energetic part 
in this election. He got indeed into some little trouble, 
for being only fifteen years old and not yet versed 
in the niceties of political controversy, he endeavoured 
to give weight and point to one of his arguments 
with the aid of the sharp end of a football goal-post. 
My brother George was returned by an enormous ma- 
jority. 

The most original electioneering poster I ever saw 
was in Capetown in March, 1914. It was an ad- 
mirably got -up enlargement of a funeral card, with a 
deep black border, adorned with a realistic picture of 
a hearse, and was worded "Unionist Opposition dead. 
Government dying. Electors of the Liesbeck Divi- 
sion drive your big nails into the coffin by voting 
for Tom Maginess on Saturday." Whether it was 
due to this novel form of electioneering or not, I can- 



134 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

not say, but Maginess won the seat by two thousand 
votes. I still have a copy of that poster. 

Neither Londonderry nor Capetown are in Ja- 
maica, but oddly enough, Middlesex is, for the island 
is divided into three counties, Cornwall, Middlesex, 
and Surrey. The local geography is a little con- 
fusing, for it is a surprise to find (in Jamaica at all 
events) that Westmoreland is in Cornwall, and Man- 
chester in Middlesex. 

Kingston owes its position as capital to the misfor- 
tunes of its two neighbours, Port Royal and Spanish 
Town. When Port Royal was totally destroyed by 
an earthquake in 1692, the few survivors crossed the 
bay and founded a new town on the sandy Liguanea 
plain. Owing to its splendid harbour, Kingston soon 
became a place of great importance, though the seat 
of Government remained in sleepy Spanish Town, but 
the latter lying inland, and close to the swamps of 
the Rio Cobre, was so persistently unhealthy that in 
1870 the Government was transferred to .Kingston. 
Though very prosperous, its most fervent admirer 
could not call it beautiful, and, owing to its sandy 
soil, it is an intensely hot place, but in compensa- 
tion it receives the full sea breeze. Every morning 
about nine, the sea breeze (locally known as "the 
Doctor") sets in. Gentle at first, by noon it is rush- 
ing and roaring through the town in a perfect gale, 
to drop and die away entirely by 4 p.m. By a most 
I convenient arrangement, the land breeze, disagreeably 
known as "the Undertaker," drops down from the 
Liguanea Mountains on to the sweltering town about 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 135 

11 p.m., and continues all through the night. It is 
this double breeze, from sea by day, from land by 
night, that renders life in Kingston tolerable. Owing 
to the sea breeze invariably blowing from the same 
direction, Jamaicans have the puzzling habit of using 
"Windward" and "Leeward" as synonyms for East 
and West. To be told that such-and-such a place is 
"two miles to Windward of you" seems lacking in 
definiteness to a new arrival. 

As we rolled slowly along in our buggy, the Guards- 
man was in a state of perpetual bewilderment at hav- 
ing growing sugar, coffee, cocoa, and rice pointed out 
to him by the driver. "I thought that it was an 
island," he murmured; "it turns out to be nothing but 
a blessed growing grocer's shop." Half-way between 
(Kingston and Spanish Town is the Old Ferry Inn, 
i the oldest inn in the New World. It stands in a mass 
of luxuriant greenery on the very edge of the Rio 
Cobre swamps, and is a place to be avoided at night- 
fall on that account. This fever trap of an inn, being 
just half-way between Kingston and Spanish Town, 
was, of all places in the island to select, the chosen 
meeting-place of the young bloods of both towns in 
the eighteenth century. Here they drove out to dine 
and carouse, and as they probably all got drunk, many 
of them must have slept here, on the very edge of 
the swamp, to die of yellow fever shortly afterwards. 
Sleepy Spanish Town, the old capital, has a decayed 
dignity of its own. The public square, with its stately 
eighteenth-century buildings, is the only architectural 
feature I ever saw in the British West Indies, Our 



136 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

national lack of imagination is typically exemplified 
in the King's House, now deserted, which occupies 
one side of the square. When it was finished in 1760, 
it was considered a sumptuous building. The archi- 
tect, Craskell, in that scorching climate, designed ex- 
actly the sort of red-brick and white stone Georgian 
house that he would have erected at, say, Richmond. 
With limitless space at his disposal, he surrounded 
his house with streets on all four sides of it, without 
one yard of garden, or one scrap of shade. No 
wonder that poor little Lady Nugent detested this 
oven of an official residence. The interior, though, 
contains some spacious, stately Georgian rooms; the 
temperature being that of a Turkish bath. 

Rodney's monument is a graceful, admirably de- 
signed little temple, and the cathedral of a vague 
Gothic, is spacious and dignified. Spanish Town 
cathedral claims to have been built in 1541, in spite 
of an inscription over the door recording that "this 
church was thrown downe by ye dreadfull hurricane 
of August ye 28, 1712, and was rebuilt in 1714." 
It contains a great collection of elaborate and splendid 
monuments, all sent out from England, and erected 
to various island worthies. The amazing arrogance of 
an inscription on a tombstone of 1690, in the south 
transept, struck me as original. It commemorates 
some Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica, and after the 
usual eulogistic category of his unparalleled good 
qualities, ends "so in the fifty-fifth year of his age he 
appeared with great applause before his God." 

There is a peculiarly beautiful tree, the Petrcecij 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 137 

which seems to flourish particularly well in Spanish 
Town. When in flower in February, neither trunk, 
leaves, nor branches can be seen for its dense clusters 
of bright blue blossoms, which are unfortunately very 
short-lived. 

Four miles above Spanish Town the hideously 
named Bog Walk, the famous gorge of the Rio Cobre, 
commences. I do not believe that there is a more ex- 
quisitely beautiful glen in the whole world. The clear 
stream rushes down the centre, whilst the rocky walls 
tower up almost perpendicularly for five or six hun- 
dred feet on either side, and these rocks, precipitous 
as they are, are clothed with a dense growth of tropical 
forest. The bread-fruit tree with its broad, scalloped 
leaves, the showy star-apple, glossy green above deep 
gold below, mahoganies, oranges, and bananas, all 
seem to grow wild. The bread-fruit was introduced 
into Jamaica from the South Sea Islands, and the 
first attempt to transplant it was made by the ill-fated 
Bounty, and led to the historical mutiny on board, 
as a result of which the mutineers established them- 
selves on Pitcairn Island, where their descendants 
remain to this day. Whatever adventures marked its 
original advent, the bread-fruit has made itself thor- 
oughly at home in the West Indies, and forms the 
staple food of the negroes. When carefully prepared 
it really might pass for under-done bread, prepared 
from very indifferent flour by an inexperienced and 
unskilled baker. It is the immense variety of the 
foliage and the constantly changing panorama that 
gives Bog Walk its charm, together with the red, 



138 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

pink, and fawn-coloured trumpets of the hibiscus, dot- 
ting the precipitous ramparts of rock over the rush- 
ing blue river. Bog Walk is distinctly one of those 
places which no one with opportunities for seeing it 
should miss. It opens out into an equally beautiful 
basin, St. Thomas-in-the-Vale, of which Michael Scott 
gives an admirable description in Tom Cringle. I 
should hardly select that steamy cup in the hills as 
a place of residence, but as a natural forcing-house 
and a sample of riotous vegetation, it is worth seeing. 
The native orchids of Jamaica are mostly oncid- 
iums, with insignificant little brown and yellow flow- 
ers, and have no commercial value whatever. The 
Guardsman, however, was obsessed with the idea that 
he would discover some peerless bloom for which he 
would be paid hundreds of pounds by a London 
dealer. Every silk-cotton tree is covered with what 
Jamaicans term "wild pines," air-plants, orchids, and 
other epiphytes, and every silk-cotton was to him a 
potential Golconda, so whenever we came across one 
he wanted the buggy stopped, and up the tree he went 
like a lamp lighter. I am bound to admit that he 
was an admirable tree climber, but I objected on the 
score of delicacy to the large rents that these aerial 
rambles occasioned in his white ducks. On regaining 
the ground he loaded the buggy with his spoils, de- 
spite the driver's assertion that "dat all trash." Un- 
fortunately with his epiphytes he brought down whole 
colonies of ants, and the Jamaican ant is a most pug- 
nacious insect with abnormal biting powers. After 
I had been forced to disrobe behind some convenient 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 139 

greenery in order to rid myself of these aggressive 
little creatures, I was compelled to put a stern veto 
on further tree exploration. 

The ascent from Ewarton, over the Monte Diavolo, 
is so splendid that I have made it five times for sheer 
delight in the view. Below lies St. Thomas-in-the- 
Vale, a splendid riot of palms, orange, and forest 
trees, and above it towers hill after hill, dominated 
by the lofty peaks of the Blue Mountains. It is a 
gorgeously vivid panorama, all in greens, gold, and 
vivid blues. Monte Diavolo is the only part of Ja- 
maica where there are wild parrots; it is also the 
home of the allspice tree, or pimento, as it is called 
in the island. This curious tree cannot be raised 
from seed or cutting, neither can it be layered; it 
can only propagate itself in Nature's own fashion, 
and the seed must pass through the body of a bird be- 
fore it will germinate. So it is fortunate, being the 
important article of commerce it is, that the supply of 

j trees is not failing. Bay rum is made from the leaves 

f of the allspice tree. 

Once over the Monte Diavolo, quite a different 
Jamaica unrolls itself. Broad pasture-lands replace 
the tropical house at Kew ; rolling, well-kept fields of 
guinea-grass, surrounded with neat, dry-stone walls 
and with trim gates, give an impression of a long- 
settled land. We were amongst the "pen-keepers," 
or stock-raisers here. This part of the colony cer- 
tainly has a home-like look; a little spoilt as regards 
resemblance by the luxuriance with which creepers 
and plants, which at home we cultivate with immense 



140 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

care in stove-houses, here riot wild in lavish masses 
over the stone walls. If the cherished rarities of one 
country are unnoticed weeds in another land, plenty 
of analogies in other respects spring to the mind. I 
could wish though, for aesthetic reasons, that our Eng- 
lish lanes grew tropical Begonias, Cor aline, and a 
peculiarly attractive Polypody fern, similar to ours, 
except for the young growths being rose-pink. Be- 
tween Dry Harbour and Brown's Town there is one 
succession of fine country-places, derelict for the most 
part now, but remnants of the great days before King 
Sugar was dethroned. Here the opulent sugar plant- 
ers built themselves lordly pleasure houses on the 
high limestone formation. Sugar grows best on 
swampy ground, but swamps breed fever, so these 
magnates wisely made their homes on the limestone, 
and so increased their days. 

The high-road runs past one stately entrance-gate 
after another; entrances with high Georgian, carved 
stone gateposts surmounted with vases, probably sent 
out ready-made from England ; Adam entrances, with 
sphinxes and the stereotyped Adam semi-circular 
railings, all very imposing, and all alike derelict. 
Beyond the florid wr ought-iron gates the gravel drives 
disappear under a uniform sea of grass; the once 
neatly shaved lawns are covered with dense "bush." 
All gone! Planters and their fine houses alike! King 
Sugar has been for long dethroned. The names of 
these places, "Amity," "Concord," "Orange Grove," 
"Harmony Hall," "Friendship," and "Fellowship 
Hall," all rather suggest the names of Masonic 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 141 

Lodges, and seem to point to a certain amount of 
conviviality. The houses themselves are hardly up 
to the standard of their ambitious entrance-gates, for 
they are mostly of the stereotyped Jamaican "Great 
House" type; plain, gabled buildings surrounded by 
verandahs, looking rather like gigantic meat safes; 
but, as they say in Ireland, any beggar can see the 
gatehouse, but few people see the house itself, and I 
imagine that skilled craftsmen were rare in Jamaica 
in the eighteenth century. 

The attempt to reconstruct the life of one, two, or 
three hundred years ago has always appealed to me, 
especially amidst very familiar scenes. The stage- 
setting, so to speak, is much as it must have appeared 
to our predecessors, but the actual drama played on 
the stage must have been so very different. I should 
have liked to have seen these planters' houses a hun- 
dred years ago, swarming with guests, whilst the cook- 
houses smoked bravely as armies of black slaves 
busied themselves in preparing one of the gigantic 
repasts described by Lady Nugent. Unfortunately 
to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, one 
would have been forced, in her words, "to eat like a 
cormorant, and to drink like a porpoise," with the 
certainty of a liver attack to follow. 

Talking of bygone days, the Fourth-Form Room 
at Harrow has been unchanged since Queen Eliza- 
beth's time, and still retains all its Elizabethan fit- 
tings: heavy, clumsy, solid oak armchairs for the 
masters, each one equipped with a stout, iron-bound, 
oak table, and strong oak benches for the boys. As 



142 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

a youngster, I liked to think that I was sitting on the 
identical benches occupied, more than three hundred 
years earlier, by Elizabethan youths in trunk hose 
and doublets. In my youth I was much impressed 
in Canterbury Cathedral by the sight of the deep 
grooves worn by the knees of countless thousands of 
pilgrims to Thomas a Beckett's shrine in the solid 
stone of the steps leading from the Choir to the retro- 
Choir, steps only to be ascended by pilgrims on their 
knees. At Harrow the inch-thick oak planks of the 
Elizabethan benches have been completely worn 
through in places by the perpetual fidgeting of hun- 
dreds of generations of schoolboys, which is as re- 
markable in its way as the knee grooves at Canter- 
bury, though the attrition is due to a different por- 
tion of the human anatomy. As a boy I used to 
wonder how the trunk-hosed Elizabethan Harrovians 
addressed each other, and whether they found it very 
difficult to avoid palpable anachronisms in every sen- 
tence. Their conversations would probably have been 
something like this: "Come hither, young Smith; I 
would fain speak with thee. Only one semester hast 
thou been here, and thy place in the school is but 
lowly, yet are thy hose cross-gartered, and thy dou- 
blet is of silk. Thou swankest, and that is not seemly, 
therefore shall I trounce thee right lustily to teach 
thee what a sorry young knave thou art." "Nay, good 
Master Brown, hearken to me. This morn too late I 
kept my bed, and finding not my buff jerkin, did don 
in haste my Sunday doublet of changeable taffeta, 
for thou wottest the ills that do befall those late for 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 143 

school. Neither by my halidom knew I, that being 
yet of tender years, it was not meet for me to go cross- 
gartered, so prithee, gentle youth, cease belabouring 
me with thy feet." 

Incidentally, I suppose that Christopher Columbus 
and his adventurers all landed in the West Indies 
in 1492, clad in full armour, after the fashion of the 
age, and I cannot imagine how they escaped being 
baked alive in the scorching heat. Every suit of 
armour must have been a portable Dutch-oven, in- 
flicting tortures on its unfortunate wearer. The little 
bay near Brown's Town where Columbus landed in 
Jamaica, on his third voyage, is still called "Don 
Christopher's Cove," though the Spanish form of his 
name is, of course, Cristobal Colon. 

Brown's Town is the most beautiful little spot 
imaginable, glowing with colour from its wealth of 
flowers. It had, though, another attraction for me. 
The hotel was kept by a white lady of most "serious" 
views, and in the hotel dining-room I found a book- 
shelf containing all the books given me as a child for 
Sunday reading. There they all were ! Little Henry 
and his Bearer, Anna Ross the Orphan of Waterloo, 
Agathos, and many, many more,, including a well- 
remembered American book, Melbourne House. The 
heroine of the last-named work, an odiously priggish 
child called Daisy Randolph, refused to sing on a 
Sunday when desired to do so by her mother. For 
this, most properly, she was whipped. A devoted 
black maid who shared Daisy's religious views, com- 
forted her little mistress by bringing her a supper of 



144 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

fried oysters, ice-cream and waffles. As a child I used 
to think how gladly I would undergo a whipping 
every Sunday were it only to be followed by a supper 
of fried oysters, ice-cream and waffles, the latter a 
comestible unknown to me, but suggesting infinitely 
delicious possibilities. Unfortunately I can never 
remember having been asked to sing on Sunday, or 
indeed on any other day. 

Speaking seriously, I do not believe that these emo- 
tionally pietistic little books produced any good effect 
on the children into whose hands they were put. I 
remember as a child feeling exasperated against the 
ultra-righteous little heroines of all these works. I 
say heroine, because no boy was ever given a chance 
as a household-reformer, unless he had happened to 
have been born a hopeless cripple, or were suffering 
from an incurable spinal complaint. In the latter 
case, experience induced the certainty that the author 
would be unable to resist the temptation of introduc- 
ing a pathetic death-bed scene. Accordingly, when 
the little hero's spine grew increasingly painful and 
he began to waste away, the two next chapters were 
carefully skipped in order to be spared the harrow- 
ing details of the young martyr's demise. Girls, not 
being so invariably doomed to an early death, were 
alone qualified to act as family evangelists, and one 
knew that the sweet child's influence was bound, slowly 
but surely, to permeate the entire household. Her 
mother would cease to care only for "the world and 
its fine things," and would even endeavour to curb 
her inordinate love of dress. Her father would prac- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 145 

tically abandon betting, and, should he have been 
fortunate enough to have backed a winner, would at 
once rush on conscience-stricken feet to pour the 
whole of his gains into the nearest missionary collect- 
ing-box. Even the cynical old bachelor uncle, who 
habitually scoffed at his niece's precocious piety, be- 
came gradually influenced by her shining example, 
and would awake one morning to find himself the 
amazed, yet gratified, possessor of "a new heart." 

In order to renew my acquaintance with the whole 
of these friends of my youth, I remained two days 
longer in Brown's Town, with the assent of the good- 
natured Guardsman. 

Joss, the Guardsman, had a fine baritone voice, and 
the English rector of Brown's Town, after hearing 
him sing in the hotel, at once commandeered him for 
his church on Sunday, though warning him that he 
would be the only white member of the choir. My 
services were also requisitioned for the organ. That 
church at Brown's Town is, by the way, the most 
astonishingly spacious and handsome building to find 
in an inland country parish in Jamaica. On the Sun- 
day, seeing the Guardsman in conversation with the 
local tenor, a gentleman of absolutely ebony-black 
complexion, at the vestry door, both of them in their 
cassocks and surplices, I went to fetch my camera, 
for here at last was a chance of satisfying the Guards- 
man's mania for turning his trip to the West Indies 
to profitable account. Every one is familiar with the 
ingenious advertisements of the proprietors of a cer- 
tain well-known brand of whisky. My photograph 



146 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

would, unquestionably, be a picture in "Black and 
White," both as regards complexion and costume, but 
on second thoughts, the likenesses of two choir-men 
in cassocks and surplices seemed to me inappropriate 
as an advertisement for a whisky, however excellent 
it might be, though they had both unquestionably been 
engaged in singing spiritual songs, 
i It was Archbishop Magee who, when Bishop of 
Peterborough, encountered a drunken navvy one day 
as he was walking through the poorer quarters of 
that town. The navvy staggered out of a public- 
house, diffusing a powerful aroma of gin all round 
him; when he saw his Chief Pastor he raised his hand 
in a gesture of mock benediction and called jeeringly 
to the Bishop, "The Lord be with you!" "And with 
thy spirits" answered Magee like a flash. 

The drive from Brown's Town across the centre of 
the island to Mandeville is one of the most beautiful 
things that can be imagined. It can only be under- 
taken with mules, and then requires twelve hours, 
the road running through the heart of the ginger- 
growing district, of which Boroughbridge is the 
headquarters. The Guardsman was more than ever 
confirmed in his opinion that Jamaica was only a 
growing grocer's shop, especially as we had passed 
through dense groves of nutmeg-trees in the morning. 
I have a confused recollection of deep valleys trav- 
ersed by rushing, clear streams, of towering pinnacles 
of rock, and of lovely forest glades, the whole of them 
clothed with the most gorgeous vegetation that can be 
conceived, of strange and unfamiliar shapes glowing 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 147 

with unknown blossoms, with blue mountains in the 
distance. It was one ever-changing panorama of 
loveliness, with beauty of outline, beauty of detail, and 
unimaginable beauty of colour. 

We were forced to return to Kingston, for a French 
Cruiser Squadron was paying a prolonged visit to 
Jamaica, and the Governor required my services as 
interpreter. 

That visit of the French Fleet was quite an his- 
torical event, for it was the first outward manifesta- 
tion of the Anglo-French Entente. The Anglo- 
French Convention had been signed two years previ- 
ously, on April 8, 1904. I cannot say with whom 
the idea of terminating the five-hundred-year-old feud 
between Britain and France originated, but I know 
who were the instruments who translated the idea 
into practical effect: they were M. Paul Cambon, 
French Ambassador in London, and my brother-in- 
law, Lord Lansdowne, then Foreign Secretary; be- 
tween them they smoothed down asperities, removed 
ancient grievances, and lubricated points of contact 
where friction might arise. ISTo one, probably, antici- 
pated at the time the tremendous consequences of the 
Anglo-French Convention, nor dreamed that it was 
destined, after the most terrible conflict of all time, 
to change the entire history of the world. 

In the early part of 1905 the Emperor William 
had made his theatrical triumphal progress through 
the Turkish dominions, and on March 31 of the same 
year he landed at Tangier in great state. What exact 
agreement the Emperor concluded with the Sultan of 



148 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

Morocco we do not know, but from that moment the 
French met with nothing but difficulties in Morocco, 
their own particular "sphere of influence" under the 
Anglo-French Convention. All the reforms proposed 
by France were flouted by the Sultan, and Germans 
claimed equal commercial and economic rights with 
the French. A conference met at Algeciras on Janu- 
ary 10, 1906, to settle these and other disputed ques- 
tions, but the French authorities viewed the situation 
with the utmost anxiety. They were convinced that 
the "mailed fist" would be brandished in their faces 
on the smallest provocation, and that the French 
Navy might have to intervene. 

Now came the first visible result of the entente. 
The British Government offered the hospitality of 
Kingston Harbour, with coaling facilities, for an un- 
limited period to the French Cruiser Squadron, then 
in the West Indies. Kingston is not only the finest 
harbour in the Antilles, but the coaling arrangements 
are far superior to any in the French ports, and, 
most important point of all, Kingston would be some 
twenty-four hours steaming nearer to Gibraltar and 
the Mediterranean, in case of emergency, than the 
French islands of Guadeloupe or Martinique. 

The arrival, then, of the French Fleet was a great 
event, and, acting possibly on a hint from home, every 
attention was shown to the French officers by the 
Governor, Sir Alexander Swettenham. He enter- 
tained forty French officers to luncheon at King's 
House, and his French having grown rather rusty, 
asked me to welcome them in his name. I took 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 149 

great care in preparing my speech, and began by 
ascertaining whether any of the reporters who would' 
be present understood French. I was much relieved 
to find that not one of them knew a single word of 
the language, for that gave me a free hand. The table, 
on the occasion of the luncheon, was decorated in a 
fashion only possible in the West Indies. One end 
of the table glowed, a scarlet carpet of the splendid 
flowers of the Amherstia nobilis J looking like red satin 
tassels, then came a carpet of the great white trumpets 
of the Beaumontia, on a ground of white stephanotis. 
Lastly a blue carpet of giant solanums, interspersed 
with the dainty blue blossoms of the Petrcea, the whole 
forming the most magnificent tricolour flag imagin- 
able. The French officers much appreciated this 
attention. 

I spoke for twenty minutes, and fairly let myself 
go. With a feeling of security due to the inability 
of the reporters to follow French, I said the most 
abominably indiscreet things, considering that it was 
an official entertainment in an official residence, but 
I think that I must have been quite eloquent, for, 
when I sat down, the French Admiral crossed the 
room and shook hands warmly with me, saying, "Mon- 
sieur, au nom de la France je vous remercie." 

Joss, the Guardsman, struck up an intimate al- 
liance with a young French naval lieutenant of his 
own age. As the Guardsman knew just two words 
of French, and the Frenchman was totally ignorant 
of English, I cannot conceive how they understood one 
another, but they seemed to take great delight in each 



150 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

other's society, exploring together every corner of 
Kingston, both by day and by night, addressing each 
other as "Henri, old man," or "Joss vieux copain," 
and jabbering away incessantly, each in his own 
tongue. 

Lady Swettenham, the Governor's wife, paid a 
formal visit to the Admiral on board his flag-ship, 
the Desaix, and I accompanied her. The Admiral 
told Lady Swettenham that she and Lady Lathom, 
who was with her, must consent to be tied up with 
ribbons bearing the ship's name, the French naval 
fashion of doing honour to ladies of distinction. The 
Flag-Lieutenant came in and took a good look at 
the ladies' dresses ; Lady Swettenham being in white, 
Lady Lathom in pale mauve. Presently "Flags" 
reappeared bearing white and mauve ribbons (of 
the exact shade of her dress) for Lady Lathom, and 
pale pink and blue ones for Lady Swettenham, each 
about four yards long. Proverbially gallant as are 
British naval officers, the idea of first studying the 
ladies' dresses would not have occurred to them; that 
little touch requires a Frenchman. We wished to 
take our leave, but the Admiral begged us to remain; 
there was evidently something coming. It was an 
intensely hot afternoon, and the heavy, red-plush 
furniture and curtains of the Admiral's cabin seemed 
to add to the heat. His face wore the expression 
some people assume when they are preparing a treat 
for a child. "Flags" looked in and nodded. "Faites 
entrer alors," ordered the Admiral, still smiling, and 
a steward came in bearing six bottles of Guinness' 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 151 

stout. "You see that I know what you like," added 
the Admiral, beaming. On a broiling hot afternoon 
in Jamaica, tepid stout is the very last thing in the 
world that one would choose to drink, but the Ad- 
miral was convinced that it was the habitual beverage 
of all English people, and had actually sent his stew- 
ard ashore to procure the precious liquid. It was a 
delicate attention, but it so happened that both ladies 
had a positive aversion to stout ; they drank it bravely 
notwithstanding, and we all assumed expressions of in- 
tense delight, to the Admiral's immense gratification. 

It was the Admiral's first visit to the West Indies, 
and he did not like them. "Non, madame. Des nuits 
sans fraicheur, des fleurs sans odeur, des fruits sans 
saveur, des femmes sans pudeur; voila les Antilles!" 

The Guardsman and I, anxious to see more of this 
lovely island, went off by train to the western ex- 
tremity of Jamaica. The engineer who surveyed 
the Jamaican Government Railway must have been 
an extremely eccentric individual. There is a com- 
paratively level and very fertile belt near the sea- 
coast, extending right round the island. Here nearly 
all the produce is grown. Instead of building his 
railway through this flat, thickly populated zone, the 
engineer chose to construct his line across the moun- 
tain range of the interior, a district very sparsely in- 
habited, and hardly cultivated at all. The Jamaica 
Government Railway is admirably designed if re- 
garded as a scenic railway, but is hardly successful if 
considered as a commercial undertaking. The train 
winds slowly through the "Cockpit" country; now 



152 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

panting laboriously up steep inclines, now sliding 
down a long gradient, with a prodigious grinding of 
brakes and squeaking of wheels. The scenery is 
gorgeous, but there is no produce to handle at the 
various stations, and but few passengers to pick up. 
As we found every hotel full at our destination, we 
had to take refuge in a boarding-house, though warned 
that it was only for coloured people. We found four 
subfusc young men, with complexions shaded from 
pale coffee-colour to deep sepia, at supper in the 
dining-room. 

"May I inquire, sir," said the Guardsman, with 
ready tact, to the lightest-complexioned of the young 
men, "how long you have been out from England?" 

"I was born in Jamaica, sir," answered the im- 
mensely gratified youth, "and have never left it." 

"And do you, sir," continued the Guardsman to the 
swarthiest of them all, "feel the heat of the climate 
much? It is rather a change from England, isn't it?" 

"I, too, sir, have never left Jamaica," replied the 
delighted young man. 

So enchanted were these dusky youths at having 
been mistaken for white men, that they simply over- 
whelmed us with attentions during the rest of our stay 
there. 

The Guardsman was bent on shooting an alligator, 
and having heard that these pleasant saurians 
swarmed in a swamp beyond the town, went there 
at dusk with his rifle, and I, very foolishly, was in- 
duced to accompany him. There is something most 
uncanny in these tracts of swamp at nightfall. The 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 153 

twisted, distorted trees, the gleaming, evil-smelling 
pools of water, and the immense, snake-like lianes 
hanging from the branches all give one a curious sense 
of unreality, epecially on a moonlight night. It is 
like a Gustave Dore drawing of a bewitched forest. 
The Guardsman splashed about in the shallow water, 
but never a sign of an alligator did we see. Giant tor- 
toises crawled lazily about, just visible in the half- 
light under the trees ; innumerable land-crabs scurried 
to and fro, and unclean reptiles pattered over the 
fetid ooze, but we saw no more alligators than we 
should have seen in St. James's Park. 

There w r as a little group of coral islands, decked 
with plumes of cocoa-nut palms, on the other side 
of the bay, close to a great mangrove swamp, and the 
Guardsman insisted on our hiring a boat and rowing 
out there, blazing though the sun was. These man- 
grove swamps are evil-looking places. The man- 
grove, the only tree, I believe, that actually grows in 
salt water, has unnaturally green leaves. The trees 
grow on things like stilts, digging their roots deep 
into the foul slime. When the tide is out, these stilts 
stand grey and naked below the canopy of vivid green- 
ery, and amongst them obscene, crab-like things crawl 
over the festering black ooze. The water in the laby- 
rinth of channels between the mangroves was thick 
and discoloured; there was not a breath of air, the 
heat was unbearable, and the whole place steamed 
with decay and disease. 

Yet somehow the scene seemed very familiar, for 
one had read of it, again and again, in a hundred boys' 



154 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

books. The same mental process was at work both in 
myself and in Joss, but it took different forms. I 
composed in my mind a chapter of a thrilling romance. 
"Suddenly down one of the glassy channels between 
the mangroves we saw the pirate felucca approaching 
us rapidly. She had got out her sweeps and looked 
like some gigantic water-insect as she made her way 
towards us, churning the sleeping waters into foam. 
At her tiller stood a tall form, which I recognised 
with a shudder as that of the villainous mulatto Pedro, 
and her black flag drooped limply in the stagnant air. 
Our gallant captain at once ordered our carronades 
to be loaded with canister, and then addressed the 
crew. 'Yonder gang of dastardly miscreants think to 
capture us, my lads,' cried Captain Trueman, 'but 
little they know the material they have to deal with. 
Even the boys, Bob and Jim, young as they are, 
will show them the sort of stuff a British tar is made 
of, if I am not mistaken.' On hearing our gallant 
captain's noble words, Jim and I exchanged a silent 
hand-grip, and Jim, snatching up a matchlock, levelled 
it at the head of the mulatto Pedro, but at that very 
moment," etc., etc., etc., though I much fear that the 
remainder of Bob, the Boy Buccaneer of the Bahamas 
will remain unwritten. 

Our surroundings suggested the same idea to Joss, 
but were prompting the Guardsman to more direct 
action. From one or two of his remarks I had fore- 
seen the possibility of his making an incredible sug- 
gestion to me, and gradually suspicion ripened into 
horrified certainty. 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 155 

"Would you very much mind — " he began, "at least 
if you are not too old — I should so like — we shall 
never get another opportunity like this — would you 
very much mind — " and out it came, "playing at 
pirates for a little while?" 

It was unthinkable ! The Guardsman was actually 
proposing to a staid, middle-aged gentleman of forty- 
eight, an ex-Member of Parliament, a church- warden, 
and an ex-editor, to play at pirates with him, as though 
he were ten years old. I pointed out how unusual 
it was for an officer in the Coldstream, aged twenty- 
six, to think even of so puerile an amusement, but to 
include a dignified, earnest-minded, elderly man in the 
invitation was really an unprecedented outrage. My 
justifiable indignation increased when I found that 
the Guardsman actually expected me at my age to 
enact the role of "Carlos, the Cut-throat of the Carib- 
bean." 

Our discussion was interrupted by a violent shiver- 
ing fit which seized me, accompanied by a sudden, 
racking headache. The swamps had done their work 
on the previous evening. By night-time I was in a 
high fever, and when we returned to Kingston next 
day by train, I, with a temperature up to anywhere, 
was hardly conscious of where I was or what I was 
doing. 

I was put to bed at King's House, and the fever 
rapidly turned to malarial gastritis. The distressing 
feature connected with this complaint is that it is im- 
possible to retain any nourishment whatever. An 
attack of fever is so common in hot countries that this 



156 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

would not be worth mentioning, except as an example 
of the curious way in which Nature sometimes 
prompts her own remedy. The doctor tried half the 
drugs in the pharmacopoeia on me, the fever simply 
laughed at them all. Nothing could have exceeded 
the kindness of Sir Alexander and Lady Swetten- 
ham during my illness, but as I could take no nourish- 
ment of any kind, I naturally grew very weak. The 
doctor urged me to cancel my passage and await the 
next steamer to England, but something told me that 
as soon as I felt the motion of a ship under me, the 
persistent sickness would stop. I also felt sure that 
were I to remain in Jamaica another fortnight, I 
should remain there permanently, and gruesome mem- 
ories haunted me of an undertaker's shop in Kings- 
ton, which displayed a prominent sign, "Handsome 
black and gold funeral goods" (note the euphemism!) 
"delivered in any part of the city within two hours of 
telephone call." As I had no desire to make a more 
intimate acquaintance with the "funeral goods," how- 
ever handsome, I insisted on being carried down to 
the mail-steamer, and was put to bed in the liner. It 
was blowing very fresh, and we heard that there was 
a heavy sea outside. As long as we lay alongside the 
jetty in the smooth waters of the harbour, the dis- 
tressing symptoms persisted at their regular intervals, 
but no sooner had the ship cleared Port Royal and 
begun to lift to the very heavy sea outside, than the 
sickness stopped as though by magic. The Port 
Kingston, of the now defunct Imperial Direct West 
India Mail Line, was really a champion pitcher, for 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 157 

she had an immense beam for her length, and a great 
amount of top -hamper in the way of deck-houses. As 
the violent motion continued, I was able to take as 
much food as I wanted with impunity, and next day, 
the heavy seas still tossing the Port Kingston about 
like a cork, I was up and about, perfectly well, free 
from fever and able, as Lady Nugent would have 
said, "to eat like a cormorant." I noted, however, 
that the motion of the ship seemed to produce on most 
of the passengers an exactly opposite effect to what 
it did on myself. 

The voyage from Jamaica, by that line, was rather 
a trying one, for in the interest of the cargo of ba- 
nanas, the Captain steered straight for the New- 
foundland Banks, so in five days the temperature 
dropped from 90° to 40°, and the unfortunate West 
Indian passengers would cower and shiver in their 
thickest clothes over the radiators, where the steam 
hissed and sizzled. 

Before we had been at sea two days, we heard of a 
most gallant act that had been done by one in our 
midst. The mail-boats of the Imperial Direct Line 
each carried from six to eight apprentices, young lads 
in process of training as officers in the Merchant Serv- 
ice. The apprentices on board the Port Kingston had 
had a great deal of hard work whilst the ship was load- 
ing her cargo of fruit at Port Henderson previous to 
our voyage home, so the Captain granted them all a 
holiday, lent them one of the ship's boats, provided 
them with luncheon and fishing lines, and sent them 



158 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

out for a day's sailing and fishing in Kingston Har- 
bour. 

They sailed and caught fish, and, as the afternoon 
wore on, began to "rag," as boys will do. They ragged 
so effectually that they managed to capsize the boat, 
and were, all of them, thrown into the water. 

Curiously enough, three of the eight apprentices 
were unable to swim. The senior apprentice, a boy 
named Robert Clinch, seventeen years old, swam out, 
and brought back two of his young companions in 
safety to the keel of the upturned boat. Clinch was 
just starting to bring in the third lad, the youngest 
of them all, when there was a great swirl in the water, 
the grey outline of a shark rose to the surface, turned 
on his back, and dragged the little fellow down. 
Clinch, without one instant's hesitation, dived under 
the shark and attacked him with his bare fists. It was 
an immensely courageous thing to do, for where there 
is one shark there will probably be many, and the boy 
knew that he ran the risk of being torn to pieces at 
any minute. So rigorous was his onslaught on the 
shark that the fish released his victim, though not be- 
fore he had bitten off both the little fellow's legs at 
the thigh. Clinch swam back with the mangled body 
of his young friend to the upturned boat, and man- 
aged to get him on to the keel, but the poor lad bled 
to death in a few minutes. 

Young Clinch was a most modest boy. Nothing 
could get him to talk of his exploit, and should the sub- 
ject be mentioned, he would grow very red, shuffle his 
feet, and turn the conversation into some other chan- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 159 

nel. The passengers drew up an address, with which 
they presented him, as a mark of their appreciation 
of his act of heroism, but it was with great difficulty 
that Clinch could be induced to accept it. 

The episode made such an impression on me that 
I wrote out an account of it, got it attested and signed 
by the Captain, and forwarded it to Lord Knollys, 
an old friend of mine, who was then Private Secretary 
to King Edward, asking him to bring the matter to 
his Majesty's notice. 

I am pleased to add that, in due course, Midship- 
man Robert Clinch was duly summoned to Bucking- 
ham Palace, where he received the well-earned Albert 
Medal for saving life, and also the Medal of the Royal 
Humane Society. 

I should very much like to know what Robert 
Clinch's subsequent career has been. 



CHAPTER VI 

The Spanish Main — Its real meaning — A detestable region — 
Tarpon and sharks — The isthmus — The story of the great 
pearl "La Pelegrina" — The Irishman and the Peruvian — 
The vagaries of the Southern Cross — The great Kingston 
earthquake — Point of view of small boys — Some earthquake 
incidents — "Flesh-coloured" stockings — Negro hysteria — A 
family incident, and the unfortunate Archbishop — Port 
Royal — A sugar estate — A scene from a boy's book in real 
life — Cocoa-nuts — Reef-fishing — Two young men of great 
promise. 

With so firm a hold had Jamaica captured me that 
January 3, 1907, found me again starting for that 
delightful island, this time accompanied by a very 
favourite nephew, who, poor lad, was destined to fall 
in Belgium in the very early days of the war. 

We purposely chose the longer route by Barbados, 
Trinidad, and the Spanish Main, in order to be able 
to visit the Panama Canal Works, then only in their 
semi-final stage. 

A curious misapprehension seems to exist about 
that term "Spanish Main," which somehow suggests 
to me infinite romance; conquist adores, treasure-ships, 
gentlemen-adventurers, and bold buccaneers. It is 
merely a shortened way of writing Spanish Main- 
landj and refers not to the sea, but to the land; the 
terra firma, as opposed to the Antilles ; the continent, 
in distinction to the islands. By a natural process the 
term came to be applied to the sea washing the Span- 

160 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 161 

ish Mainland, but "main" does not mean sea, and 
never did. It is only in the last hundred years that 
poets have begun to use "main" as synonymous with 
sea, probably because there are so many more rhymes 
to the former than to the latter, and it sounds a fine 
dashing sort of term, but I can find no trace of a 
warrant for the use of the word in this sense before 
1810. "Main" refers to the land, not to the water. 

I can imagine no more detestable spot anywhere 
than this Spanish Main, in spite of the distant view 
of the mighty Cordilleras, around whose summits per- 
petual thunderstorms seem to play, and from which 
fierce gales swoop down on the sea. Clammy, suffo- 
cating heat, fever-dealing swamps, decaying towns, 
with an effete population and a huge rainfall, do not 
constitute an attractive whole. Owing to the intense 
humidity, even the gales bring no refreshing coolness 
in their train. 

It is easy to understand the importance the old 
Spanish conquistadores attached to the Isthmus of 
Panama, for all the gold brought from Peru had to be 
carried across it on mule-back to the Atlantic coast, 
before it could be shipped to Spain. Even Columbus, 
who did not know of the existence of the Pacific, 
founded a short-lived settlement at Porto Bello, or 
Nombre de Dios, in 1502, and Martin de Enciso es- 
tablished another at Darien in 1502, but the com- 
bined effects of the deadly climate and of hostile In- 
dians exterminated the settlers. After Vasco Nunez 
de Balboa had discovered the Pacific on September 
26, 1513, the strategic importance of the Isthmus be- 



162 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

came obvious, so Cartagena on the Caribbean, and 
Panama on the Pacific were founded. The ill-advised 
and ill-fated enterprise of the Scotsman William Pat- 
terson came much later, in 1698. The Scottish set- 
tlement of Darien, from which such marvellous re- 
sults were expected, lasted barely two years. In 1700 
the few survivors of the adventurers from Scotland 
were expelled by the Spaniards, ruined alike in health 
and pocket. The fever-stricken coasts of the Spanish 
Main needed but little defence of forts and guns, to 
protect them against the aggressive efforts of other 
European nations. 

At our first calling-place after leaving England, 
we heard of the total destruction of Kingston, our 
destination, by the great earthquake of January 14, 
but it was too late to turn back, so on we went, past 
breezy Barbados, and sweltering Trinidad, to the 
Spanish Main. The curious little nautilus, or Por- 
tuguese man-of-war, is very common in these waters, 
and can be seen in quantities sailing along the sur- 
face with their crude-magenta membranes extended 
to the breeze. Cartagena de Indias, a city of narrow 
streets, high houses and massive ramparts, is a curi- 
ous piece of seventeenth-century Spain to find trans- 
planted to the Tropics. I imagine that all its inhabi- 
tants, by the law of the survival of the fittest, must 
be immune from fever, which is certainly not the case 
in that most unattractive spot Colon. 

It may interest any prospective visitors to Colon to 
learn that there is excellent tarpon fishing in Colon 
Harbour itself. My nephew, having provided him- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 163 

self with a tarpon rod, hooked a splendid fish from the 
deck of the mail-steamer, the bait being a "cavalle," 
a local white fish of some 3 lbs. My nephew played 
the tarpon for nearly two hours ; the fish fought splen- 
didly, shooting continuously into the air, a curved 
glittering bar of silver, 180 lbs. of giant gleaming her- 
ring, when the line (a stout piano wire) suddenly 
snapped as he was being reeled in. A tarpon fisher- 
man has a leathern "bucket" strapped in front of him, 
in which to rest the butt of his rod, otherwise the strain 
would be too great. Whilst my nephew was playing 
his tarpon, I was fortunate enough to hook a large 
shark, and there was little fear of my line parting, for 
it was a light chain of solid steel. I was surprised that 
the brute showed so little fight, he let me tow him 
about where I liked. We fixed a running noose to 
the wire rope of a derrick, and after a few attempts 
succeeded in dropping it over the shark's head, and in 
tautening it behind his fins ; the steam-derrick did the 
rest. I could see distinctly six or seven pilot-fish play- 
ing round the shark. They were of about a pound 
weight, and were marked exactly like our fresh-water 
perch, except that their stripes were bright blue on 
a golden ground. As the shark is rather stupid, and 
has but poor eyesight, the function of the pilot-fish 
is to ascertain where food is to be found, and then to 
show their master the way to it, after which, like the 
sycophants they are, they live on the crumbs that fall 
from his mouth. The pilot-fish only deserted their 
master when the derrick hauled him out of the water, 
and at the same time some dozen remoras, or sucking- 



164 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

fish, looking like disgusted bloated leeches, let go 
their hold on the shark and dropped back into the sea. 

No human being would voluntarily pay a second 
visit to Colon, a dirty, mean collection of shanties, 
with inhabitants worthy of it. The principal article 
of commerce seemed to be black-calico "funeral suits," 
a sartorial novelty to me. 

Since the Americans took command of the Canal 
Zone they have achieved wonders in the way of sani- 
tation, and have practically extirpated yellow fever. 
The credit for this is principally due to Colonel Goe- 
thals, but no amount of sanitation can transform a 
belt of swamps with an annual rainfall of 150 inches 
into a health-resort. The yellow-lined faces of the 
American engineers told their own tale, although they 
had no longer to contend with the fearful mortality 
from yellow fever which, together with venality and 
corruption, effectually wrecked Ferdinand de Les- 
seps' attempt to pierce the Isthmus in 1889. 

The railway between Colon and Panama was 
opened as far back as 1855, and is supposed to have 
cost a life for every sleeper laid. Neglected little 
cemeteries stretch beside the track almost from ocean 
to ocean. Before the American Government took 
over the railway there was one class and one fare be- 
tween Colon and Panama, for which the modest sum 
of $25 gold was demanded, or £5 for forty-seven 
miles, which makes even our existing railway fares 
seem moderate. People had perforce to use the rail- 
way, for there were no other means of communication. 

For forty-seven miles the track runs through rank, 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 165 

steamy swamps, devoid of beauty, the monotony only 
broken by the endless cemeteries and an occasional 
alligator dozing on a bank of black slime. 

Panama is the oldest city on the American Conti- 
nent, and has just four hundred and one years of his- 
tory behind it. It has unquestionably a strong ele- 
ment of the picturesque about it. It is curious to see 
in America so venerable a church as that of Santa 
Ana, built in 1560. 

From the immensely solid ramparts, built in the 
actual Pacific, the Pearl Islands are dimly visible. 
These islands had a personal interest for me. Balboa 
was the first European to set eyes on the Pacific on 
September 29, 1513. He had with him one hundred 
and ninety Spaniards, amongst whom was the famous 
Pizarro. A few days after, he crossed over to the 
Pearl Islands, which he found in a state of great com- 
motion, for a slave had just found the largest pear- 
shaped pearl ever seen. Balboa, with great presence 
of mind, at once annexed the great pearl, and gave 
\the slave his freedom. ; 

Having fallen out of favour with Ferdinand V. of 
Spain (Isabella had died in 1504), Balboa endeav- 
oured to propitiate the king by sending home an en- 
voy with gifts for him, and amongst these presents 
was the great pearl. The beauty of the j ewel was at 
once recognised; it was named "La Pelegrina," and 
took its place amongst the treasures of the Spanish 
Crown. After Ferdinand V.'s death, the great pearl 
with the other Crown jewels came into the posses- 
sion of his grandson, the Hapsburg Emperor Charles 



166 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

V., and from Charles "La Pelegrina" descended to 
his son, Philip II. of Spain. When Philip married 
Queen Mary Tudor of England, he gave her "La 
Pelegrina" as a wedding present. The portrait of 
Queen Mary in the Prado at Madrid, shows her 
wearing this pearl, so does another one at Hampton 
Court, and a small portrait in Winchester Cathedral, 
where her marriage with Philip took place. After 
Mary's death "La Pelegrina" returned to Spain, and 
was handed down from sovereign to sovereign until 
Napoleon in 1808 placed his brother Joseph on the 
throne of Spain. It was a somewhat unsteady throne, 
and after many vicissitudes, Joseph fled from Spain 
in the Spring of 1813. Anticipating some such en- 
forced retirement, Joseph, like a prudent man, had 
had some of the smaller and more valuable pictures 
from the Spanish palaces packed in wagons and des- 
patched towards the frontier. These pictures fell into 
the hands of Wellington's troops at the Battle of 
Vittoria, and are hanging at this moment in Apsley 
House, Piccadilly, for Ferdinand VII., on his restor- 
ation to the throne, presented them to the Duke of 
Wellington; or rather, to be quite accurate, "lent" 
them to the Duke of Wellington and to his succes- 
sors. Joseph Bonaparte also thoughtfully placed 
some of the Spanish Crown jewels, including "La 
Pelegrina," in his pockets, and got away safely with 
them. Joseph died, and left the great pearl to his 
nephew, Prince Louis Napoleon, afterwards Napo- 
leon III. When Prince Louis came to London in 
exile, he brought "La Pelegrina" with him. Prince 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 167 

Louis Napoleon was a close friend of my father's and 
had been his "Esquire" at the famous Eglinton tour- 
nament. The Prince came to see my father one day 
and confided to him that he was in great pecuniary 
difficulties. He asked my father to recommend him 
an honest jeweller who would pay him the price he 
wanted for "La Pelegrina." He named the price, 
and drew the great pearl out of his pocket. My 
father, after examining the jewel and noticing its 
flawless shape and lustre, silently opened a drawer, 
drew a cheque, and handed it to Prince Louis with- 
out a word. That afternoon my father presented my 
mother with "La Pelegrina." To my mother it was 
an unceasing source of anxiety. The pearl had never 
been bored, and was so heavy that it was constantly 
falling from its setting. Three times she lost it ; three 
times she found it again. Once at a ball at Bucking- 
ham Palace, on putting her hand to her neck, she 
found that the great pearl had gone. She was much 
distressed, knowing how upset my father would be. 
On going into supper, she saw "La Pelegrina" gleam- 
ing at her from the folds of the velvet train of the 
lady immediately in front of her. Again she lost it 
at Windsor Castle, and it was found in the uphol- 
stery of a sofa. As a child, on the rare occasions when 
"La Pelegrina" came out of its safe, I loved to stroke 
and smooth its sleek, satin-like sheen. The great pearl 
somehow fascinated me. When it came into my 
brother's possession after my father's death, he had 
"La Pelegrina" bored, though it impaired its value, 
so my sister-in-law was able to wear the great jewel 



168 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

as often as she wished without running the constant 
danger of losing it. I liked that distant glimpse of 
the Pearl Islands, for they were the birthplace of the 
jewel which had attracted me so curiously as a child. 
We returned from Panama by a train after dark. 
As the night-air from the swamps has the reputation 
of being deadly, every window in the car was shut. 
I noticed a dark-skinned citizen of either Peru or 
Ecuador in some difficulties with the conductor, ow- 
ing to his lack of knowledge of English. The Peru- 
vian pulled up a window (up on the American Con- 
tinent, not down as with us) and sat in the full draught 
of the night-air. A pleasant young Irishman named 
Martin, a near relative of the Miss Martin who col- 
laborated with Miss Somerville in the inimitable Ex- 
periences of an Irish R.M. noticed this. "By Gad! 
that fellow will gei/ fever if he sits in the draught 
from the swamps. I'll go and warn him." I told 
Martin that the South American spoke no English. 
"That's all right," cried Martin. "I speak a little 
Spanish myself." Taking a seat by the Peruvian, 
Martin tapped him on the shoulder to secure his at- 
tention, pointed a warning finger at the open win- 
dow, and said slowly but impressively, in a strong 
Co. Galway accent, "Swamp — o, mustn't-sit-in- 
draught — o; sit-in-draught — o, get-chill — o; get-chill 
— o, catch-fever — o; catch-fever — o, damned-ill — o; 
damned-ill — o, die — o." He repeated this twice, and 
upon the Peruvian turning a blank look of incompre- 
hension at him, returned to his place saying, "I don't 
believe that fellow understands one single word of 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 169 

Spanish," so I went myself and warned the Peruvian 
in Spanish of the risk he was running, and he closed 
the window. I do not know whether he suffered for 
his imprudence, but Martin was down next day with 
a sharp bout of fever. 

Martin next announced that the Southern Cross 
had gone stark, staring mad, and had moved round by 
mistake to the North. We were travelling from the 
Pacific to the Atlantic, therefore presumably going 
from West to East, and there, through the window, 
sure enough was that much-overrated constellation, 
the Southern Cross, shining away gaily in the North. 
Upon reflexion, it seemed unreasonable to suppose 
that the Southern Cross could have so far forgotten 

| its appointed place in the heavens, the points of the 
compass, and the very obligations its name imposed 
upon it, as to establish itself deliberately in the North : 
there must be some mistake somewhere. So we got 
a map, and discovered, to our amazement, that, 
though Colon is on the Atlantic and Panama on the 
Pacific, yet Colon is West of Panama, owing to the 
kink in the Isthmus at this point. The railway from 

•the Pacific runs North-west to the Atlantic, though 
at this particular part of the line we were travelling 
due West, so the Southern Cross was right after all, 
and we were wrong. 

The track from ocean to ocean seemed to be lined 
with one continuous street of wooden stores, eating- 
houses, and dance-halls, all erected for the benefit of 
the workers on the canal, and all alike blazing with 



170 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

paraffin lamps. It was like one continuous fair, but 
the kindly night masked the endless cemeteries. 

We bought in Colon a little book of verse entitled 
Panama Patchwork. It was the work of an Ameri- 
can, James Stanley Gilbert, who had lived for six 
years on the Isthmus, and had seen most of his friends 
die there. Gilbert's lines have, therefore, a certain 
excusable tinge of morbidity, as, for example : 

"Beyond the Chagres River 
Are paths that lead to death: 
To fever's deadly breezes, 
To malaria's poisonous breath." 

I refrain from quoting others which are really too 
gruesome to reproduce, but I like his welcome to the 
Trade wind, the boisterous advent of which announces 
the end of the very unhealthy wet season, and a brief 
spell of dry weather. It must be remembered that 
the author was unused to the pen: 

"Blow thou brave old Trade wind, blow ! 
Send the mighty billows flashing 
In the radiant sunlight, dashing 
O'er the reef, like thunder crashing, 
Blow thou brave old Trade wind, blow !" 

One can almost hear the great seas thundering on the 
coral reefs in reading these lines, and can see in imag- 
ination the nodding cocoanut palms bending their 
pliant green heads to the life-giving Trades. 

It is curious the different terms used for these 
continuous winds: we call them "Trade winds"; the 
French, "Vents alizes"; the Germans, "Passatwinde" ; 
the Spanish "Vientos generates. " All quite different. 

As my nephew and I drove out of the dock en- 
closure at Kingston, we were appalled at the scene 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 171 

of desolation that met our eyes. Kingston was one 
heap of ruins ; there was not a house intact. Neither 
of us had imagined the possibility of a town being so 
completely destroyed, for this was in 1907, not 1915, 
and twenty brief seconds had sufficed to wreck a pros- 
perous city of 40,000 inhabitants. The streets had 
been partially cleared, but the telephone and the 
electric-light wires were all down, as were the over- 
head wires for the trolly-cars. We traversed three 
miles of shapeless heaps of bricks and stones. Some 
trim well-kept villas in the suburbs which I remem- 
bered well, were either shaken down, or gaped on the 
road through broad fissures in their frontages, great 
piles of debris announcing that the building was only, 
so to speak, standing on sufferance, and would have 
to be entirely reconstructed. On arriving at King's 
House, we found the main building still standing, 
but so damaged that it might collapse at any moment, 
and therefore uninhabitable. The handsome ballroom, 
which formed a separate wing, was nothing but a pile 
of rubbish, a formless mass of bricks and plaster. The 
dining-room, making the corresponding wing, was 
built entirely of wood, and had consequently escaped 
injury. This dining-room was a very lofty hall, paved 
with marble and entirely surrounded by arches open 
to the air. It had previously reminded me of the in- 
teriors seen in Italian pictures of sacred subjects, 
with its bareness, spacious whiteness, its columns and 
arches. Here the Governor, Lady Swettenham and 
her sister were living, in little encampments formed 
by screens. Two splendid chandeliers of Spanish 



172 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

bronze, originally looted from Havannah in the eigh- 
teenth century, had been dismantled by the Gover- 
nor's orders, in view of the possibility of further 
shocks. The verandah outside formed the living-room 
for every one. My nephew and I were very comfort- 
ably lodged in a little wooden shed, formerly the laun- 
dry. I had noticed as we drove through the town that 
the great Edinburgh reservoirs were apparently quite 
uninjured, and here at King's House the fountain was 
splashing in its basin as gaily as ever, the building 
containing the big swimming-bath was undamaged, 
and the spring which fed the bath still gurgled cheer- 
fully into it. Wherever there was water, the shock 
seemed to have been neutralised, for I imagine that 
the water acted as a cushion to deaden the earth-wave. 
Neither the electric lighting nor the telephones were 
working. 

A tropical night is seldom quiet, what with the 
croaking of frogs, the chirping of the cicadas, and 
some bird, insect, or reptile that imitates the winding 
in of a fishing-reel for hours together, but really the 
noise of the Jamaican nights after the earthquake was 
quite unbearable. Negroes are very hysterical, and 
some black preachers had utilised the earthquake to 
start a series of revival meetings, and these were held 
just outside the grounds of King's House. Right 
through the night they lasted, with continual hymn- 
singing, varied with loud cries and groans. "Abide 
with me" is a beautiful hymn, but really its beauties 
began to pall when it had been sung through from 
beginning to end nine times running. Neither my 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 173 

nephew nor I could get any sleep that first night ow- 
ing to the blatant devotional exercises of the over- 
wrought negroes. 

Both Sir Alexander and Lady Swettenham were 
really wonderful. He, though an old man, only al- 
lowed himself five hours' sleep, and spent his days 
at Headquarters House trying to bring the affairs of 
the ruined city into some kind of order, and to start 
the every-day machinery of ordinary civilised life 
again, for there were no shops, no butchers or bakers, 
no clothing, no groceries — everything had been de- 
stroyed, and had to be reconstructed. We had noticed 
the previous afternoon a very rough newly erected 
shanty. It was barely finished, but already jets of 
steam were puffing from its roof, and a large sign 
proclaimed it a steam-bakery. That was the only 
source of bread-supply in Kingston. Is it necessary 
to specify the nationality of a firm so prompt to rise 
to an emergency, or to add that the names over the 
door were two Scottish ones? Lady Swettenham was 
equally indefatigable, and sat on endless committees : 
for sheltering the destitute, for helping the homeless 
with food, money and clothing, for providing for the 
widows and orphans. 

It was estimated that twelve hundred people lost 
their lives on that fatal afternoon of January 14, 1907, 
though even this pales before the terrific catastrophe 
of St. Pierre in Martinique, on May 8, 1902, when 
forty thousand people and one of the finest towns in 
the West Indies were blotted out of existence in one 
minute by a fiery blast from the volcano Mont Pele. 



174 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

Lady Swettenham was driving into Kingston with 
Lady Dudley at 2.30 p.m. on the day of the earth- 
quake. Some ten minutes later they felt the carriage 
suddenly rise, and then fall again. The horses stopped, 
and the coachman looked back in vain for the tree 
he thought he must have run over, until, on turning 
the next corner, they came upon a house in ruins. 
Then Lady Swettenham knew. Both ladies worked 
all night in the hospital, attending to the hundreds 
of injured. The hospital dispensary had been 
wrecked, and, sad to say, the supply of chloroform 
became exhausted, so amputations had to be per- 
formed without anaesthetics. Most fortunately there 
was to have been a great ball at King's House that 
very evening, so Lady Swettenham was able to pro- 
vide the hospital with unlimited soup, jellies, and cold 
chickens ; otherwise it would have been impossible to 
provide the sufferers with any food at all. 

As we all know, points of view differ. After the 
trolley-car service had been re-established, my nephew 
and I had occasion to go into Kingston daily towards 
noon. On the front bench of the car there was always 
seated a little white boy, about nine years old, with a 
pile of school-books. He was a well-mannered, 
friendly little fellow and soon entered into conversa- 
tion. Waxing confidential, he observed to us, "Isn't 
this earthquake awfully jolly? Our school is all 
'mashed up,' so we get out at half-past eleven instead 
of at one." 

"And how about your own house, Charlie? Is that 
all right?" 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 175 

"Oh no, it's all 'mashed up' too, so is Daddy's store. 
We're living on the lawn in tents, like Robinson Cru- 
soe. It's most awfully jolly!" 

Incidentally I may remark that Charlie's father had 
been completely ruined by the earthquake, his store 
not being insured, but the small boy only saw things 
from his own point of view. 

A certain London West-End church, with which I 
am connected, has a Resident Choir School attached 
to it. As the choir-boys' dormitory is at the top of 
the building, every time that there was an air-raid 
during the war, they were routed out of bed and sent 
down to the coal-cellar. The boys were told to write 
an account of one peculiarly severe raid as part of their 
school-work. One small urchin described it as fol- 
lows: "The Vicar woke us up and told us there was 
an air-raid, and that we were to go down into the coal- 
cellar in our pyjamas with our blankets. It was aw- 
fully jolly down in the cellar. In our blankets we 
looked like robbers in a cave, or like a lot of Red In- 
dians. The Vicar told us stories, and we had buns and 
cocoa and sang songs. It was all so awfully jolly 
that all the chaps hope that there will be plenty more 
air-raids." 

Here again the small boy's point of view differs 
materially from that of the adult. 

To go back to Jamaica, an acquaintance had re- 
turned early from his office, and was having a cup of 
coffee on his verandah at 2.30. Suddenly he saw the 
trees at the end of his garden rise up some eight feet. 
A quick brain-wave suggested an earthquake to him 



176 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

at once, and half -unconsciously he jumped from the 
verandah for all he was worth. As he alighted on 
the lawn, his house crashed down behind him. 

There were some further milder shocks. I was en- 
gaged in shaving early one morning in our little 
wooden house, when I felt myself pushed violently 
against the dressing-table, almost removing my chin 
with the razor at the same time. I suspected my neph- 
ew of a practical joke, and called out angrily to 
him. In an aggrieved voice he protested that he 
had not touched me, but had himself been hurled by 
an unseen agency against the wardrobe. Then came 
a perfect cannonade of nuts from an overhanging tree 
on to the wooden roof of our modest temporary abode, 
and still we did not understand. I had at that time 
an English valet, the most stolid man I have ever 
come across. He entered the hut with a pair of brown 
shoes in one hand, a pair of white ones in the other. 
In the most matter-of-fact way he observed, "There's 
been an earthquake, so perhaps you would like to wear 
your brown shoes to-day, instead of the white ones." 
By what process of reasoning he judged brown shoes 
more fitted to earthquake conditions than white ones, 
rather escaped me. 

Appalling tragedy though the earthquake was, like 
most tragedies it had its occasional lighter side. A 
certain leading lady of the island had been in the habit 
of wearing short skirts, long before the dictates of 
fashion imposed the present unbecoming skimpy gar- 
ments. She did this on account of the numerous in- 
sect pests with which Jamaica unfortunately abounds. 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 177 

For the same reason she adopted light-coloured stock- 
ings, so that any creeping intruder could be easily 
seen and brushed off. Her wardrobe being destroyed 
in the earthquake, she took the train into Spanish 
Town in an endeavour to replenish it. In a large 
drapery store the black forewoman at once recognised 
the lady, and came forward, all bows and smiles, to 
greet so important a customer. 

"Please, what can I hab de pleasure of showing 
Madam?" 

"I want some silk stockings, either pink or flesh- 
colour, if you have any!" 

"Very sorry, Madam, we hab no pink silk stock- 
ings, but we hab plenty of flesh-coloured ones," tak- 
ing down as she spoke a great bundle of black silk 
stockings. Of course, if one thinks over it for a mo- 
ment, it would be so. 

The religious hysteria amongst the negroes showed 
no signs of abating. A black "prophet," a full-blooded 
negro named Bedward, made his appearance, and 
gained a great following. Bedward, dressed in a dis- 
carded British naval uniform, and attended by a neu- 
rotic bodyguard of screaming, hysterical negresses, 
made continual triumphal parades through the streets 
of Kingston. As far as I could ascertain the most im- 
portant item in his religious crusade was the baptism 
of his converts in the Hope River, at a uniform charge 
of half-a-crown per head. 

With regard to baptism, a curious incident occurred 
long before I was born. A sister of mine, the late 
Duchess of Buccleuch, was so frail and delicate at her 



178 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

birth that it was thought that she could not possibly 
survive. She was accordingly baptised privately two 
days after her birth. She rallied, and grew into a big 
sturdy girl. When she was four years old, my father 
had her received into the Church by the Archbishop of 
Canterbury, at the Chapel Royal, St. James's Palace. 
During the service the Archbishop became inarticu- 
late, and many of those present feared that he had sus- 
tained a stroke, or had been suddenly afflicted with 
aphasia. What had happened was this: As my sis- 
ter was inclined to be fidgetty and troublesome, my 
mother had, perhaps unwisely, given her a packet of 
sugar-almonds to keep her quiet. The child was 
actually sucking one of these when she arrived at the 
Chapel Royal, but was, of course, made to remove it. 
Unseen by any one, she managed to place another in 
her mouth. When the Archbishop took her in his 
arms, the child, seeing his mouth so close to hers, with 
the kindest intentions in the world, took the sugar- 
almond from her own mouth and popped it into the 
Archbishop's. Never had a Primate been in a more 
embarrassing situation! Having both his arms occu- 
pied in holding the child, he could not remove the of- 
fending almond with his fingers. It would be quite 
superfluous on my part to point out how highly in- 
decorous it would be for an Archbishop to — shall we 
say to expel anything from his mouth — in church ; and 
even after the sugar had been dissolved, an almond 
must be crunched before it can be disposed of, another 
wholly inadmissible contingency. So the poor Arch- 
bishop had perforce to remain inarticulate; let us only 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 170 

hope that you and I may never find ourselves in so 
difficult a situation. 

Many people in Jamaica were in 1907 in quite as 
difficult a situation. I found the wife of the Chief 
Justice, an old acquaintance of mine in the Far East, 
living in the emptied swimming-bath of what had been 
her home. The officers of the West India Regiment 
at Up Park Camp were all under canvas on the crick- 
et-ground. The officers' quarters at Up Park Bar- 
racks were exceedingly well designed for the climate, 
being raised on arcades. They were shattered, but 
the wooden shingle roofs had fallen intact and un- 
broken, and lay on the ground in pieces about 100 feet 
long, a most curious spectacle. Students of Tom 
Cringle will remember the gruesome description of 
his dinner at the Mess at Up Park Camp, during an 
epidemic of yellow fever, when one officer after an- 
other got up and left the room, pinching the regi- 
mental doctor on the shoulder as he did so, as an in- 
timation that he, too, had been claimed by the yellow 
death. The military authorities acted unwisely in se- 
lecting Up Park as a site for barracks. It certainly 
stands high, but is shut off from the sea breeze by the 
hill known as Long Mountain, and has, in addition, a 
dangerous swamp to windward of it, two drawbacks 
which might have been foreseen. 

I noticed that brick houses suffered more than stone 
ones. This was attributed to the inferior mortar used 
by Jamaican masons, for which there can be no excuse, 
for the island abounds in lime. Wooden houses es- 
caped scatheless. Every statue in the Public Gardens 



180 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

was thrown down, except that of Queen Victoria. The 
superstitious negroes were much impressed by this 
fact, though the earthquake had, curiously enough, 
twisted the statue entirely round. Instead of facing 
the sea, as she formerly did, the Queen now turned 
her back on it, otherwise the statue was uninjured. 
The clock on the shattered Parish Church recorded 
the fatal hour when it had stopped in the general 
ruin: 2.42 p.m. As far as I could learn, the earth- 
quake had not taken the form of a trembling motion, 
but the solid ground had twice risen and fallen eight 
feet, a sort of land-wave, which apparently was con- 
fined to the light sandy Liguanea plain, for where 
the mountains began no shock had been felt.' The 
fine old church of St. Andrew had been originally 
built in 1635, but had been demolished by the earth- 
quake of 1692 and rebuilt in 1700, as the inscription 
at the west end testified. Here the words "Anna Re- 
gina," surrounded by a mass of florid carving, showed 
that Jamaica is no land of yesterday. The earthquake 
of 1907 shook down the tower, but did not injure the 
collection of very fine seventeenth- and eighteenth-cen- 
tury monuments the church contains. The inscrip- 
tion on one of these, opposite the Governor's pew, 
pleased me by its originality. After a detailed list 
of the many admirable qualities of the lady it com- 
memorates, it goes on to say that "in the yeare 1685 
she passed through the spotted veil of the smallpox 
to her God." 

We accompanied the Governor to Port Royal to 
take stock of the damage there. Previous to 1692, 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 181 

Port Royal was reputed the richest and the wickedest 
spot on earth, for it was the headquarters of the Buc- 
caneers; here they divided their ill-gotten gains, and 
here they strutted about bedizened in their tawdry 
finery, drinking and gambling. I should be inclined 
to distrust the local legend that in the many taverns 
the wine was all served in jewelled golden cups, for, 
given the character of the customers, one would imag- 
ine that the gold cups would be apt to leave the tav- 
erns with the customers. Then came the earthquake 
of 1692, and half of Port Royal was swallowed by 
the sea. A pillar has been erected at Green Bay, op- 
posite to a Huguenot refugee, one Lewis Galdy, who 
had a wonderful escape. According to the inscription 
on it, "Mr. Lewis Galdy was swallowed by the earth- 
quake, and, by the providence of God, thrown by an- 
other shock into the sea, and lived many years after- 
wards in great reputation." 

Port Royal cannot be called a fortunate spot, for 
in 1703 it was again entirely destroyed by fire, and in 
1722 it was swept away by a hurricane. 

It is, in spite of its historic past, a mean, squalid, 
decaying little place. Being built almost entirely of 
wood, the town had sustained but little injury, but 
the massive concrete fort at the end of the peninsula 
had slid bodily into the sea, six-inch guns and all. 
Some twenty cocoa-nut palms it had taken with it 
were standing in the water, their brown withered tops 
just peering above the surface, giving a curious effect 
of desolation. A tramway used for conveying ammu- 
nition bore witness to the violence of the earth-waves, 



182 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

for it stood in places some ten feet up in the air, rest- 
ing on nothing at all ; looking for all the world like a 
switchback railway at Earl's Court. So many charges 
are levelled at the Royal Engineers that it is pleasant 
to be able to testify that every building erected by 
this much-abused corps at Port Royal had resisted 
the earthquake and was standing intact. Port Royal, 
notwithstanding its situation at the end of a penin- 
sula, had in old days a terrible reputation for un- 
healthiness, only surpassed by that of Fort Augusta 
across the bay, the latter a veritable charnel-house. 
The neighbourhood of the poisonous swamps of the 
Rio Cobre was in both cases responsible for the loss of 
tens of thousands of British soldiers' lives in these 
two ill-fated spots. They were both hot-beds of yel- 
low fever. 

My nephew and I, being able to do no good there, 
were anxious to escape from ruined Kingston, and 
made arrangements to stay as paying guests with one 
or two planters, in order to see something of their 
daily life. After a second drive through the exqui- 
sitely beautiful Bog Walk and over Monte Diavolo, 
we found ourselves on the sugar estate of a widow, a 
lady of pure white blood. There were abundant indi- 
cations of the former prosperity of the place, and even 
more apparent signs that at present the wolf was 
very close to the door. The verandah was paved with 
marble, there was some fine mahogany carving in the 
central hall, the dessert-service was of George II. 
silver-gilt, and the china beautiful old Spode. Every- 
thing else about the place told its own story of des- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 183 

perate financial conditions. Our hostess declared that 
it was impossible for a woman to manage a sugar es- 
tate, as she could not always be about amongst the 
canes and in the boiler-house, and her sons were not 
yet old enough to help her. No one who has not ex- 
perienced it can picture the heat of a Jamaican sugar- 
factory ; I should imagine the temperature to be about 
120°. Most people, I think, take a rather childish 
pleasure in watching the first stages of the manufac- 
ture of familiar products. I confess to feeling inter- 
ested on being told that the stream of muddy liquid 
issuing from the crushed canes and trickling gaily 
down its wooden gutters, would ultimately figure as 
the lump-sugar of our breakfast-tables. There is also 
a peculiarly fascinating apparatus known as a 
vacuum-pan, peeping into which, through a little talc 
window, a species of brown porridge transforms itself 
into crystallised sugar of the sort known to house- 
keepers as "Demerara" under your very eyes; and 
another equally attractive, rapidly revolving machine 
in which the molasses, by centrifugal force, detaches 
itself from the sugar, and runs of its own accord down 
its appointed channels to the rum distillery, where 
Alice's Dormouse would have had the gratification 
of seeing a real treacle-well. In this latter place, 
where the smell of the fermenting molasses is awful, 
only East Indian coolies can be employed, a West 
Indian negro being unable to withstand its alcoholic 
temptations. 

After seeing all the lions of the island, we drifted 



184 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

as paying guests to a school for little white boys on 
the north coast. 

The surroundings of this school were ideally beau- 
tiful. It stood on a promontory jutting into the sea, 
with a coral reef in front of it, but shut in as it was 
by the hills, the heat of the place was unbearable, and 
the little white boys all looked pathetically pale and 
"peaky." 

My nephew pointed out to me that a little cove 
near the school must be the identical place we had 
both read of hundreds of times, and he justly re- 
marked what an ideal spot it would be in which to 
be shipwrecked. All the traditional accessories were 
there. The coral reef with the breakers thundering 
on it; the placid lagoon inshore; a little cove whose 
dazzling white coral beach was fringed with cocoa- 
nut palms down to the very water's edge; a crystal- 
clear spring trickling down the cliff and tumbling into 
a rocky basin; the hill behind clothed with a dense 
jungle of bread-fruit trees and wild plantains, whose 
sea of greenery was starred with the golden balls of 
innumerable orange trees ; the whole place must really 
have been lifted bodily out of some boy's book, and 
put here to prove that writers of fiction occasionally 
tell the truth, for it seemed perfectly familiar to both 
of us. Certainly, the oranges were of the bitter Se- 
ville variety and were uneatable, and wild plantains 
are but an indifferent article of diet ; still, they satis- 
fied the eye, and fulfilled their purpose as indispen- 
sable accessories to the castaway's new home. It 
would be impossible to conceive of more orthodox sur- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 185 

roundings in which to be shipwrecked, for our vessel 
would be, of course, piled up on the reef within con- 
venient distance, and we would presuppose a current 
setting into the cove. We should also have to assume 
that the ship was loaded with a general cargo, includ- 
ing such unlikely items as tool-chests and cases of 
vegetable seeds, all of which would be washed ashore 
undamaged precisely when wanted. It is quite obvious 
that a cargo of, say, type-writers, or railway metals, 
would prove of doubtful utility to any castaways, nor 
would there be much probability of either of these ar- 
ticles floating ashore. My nephew, a slave to tradi- 
tion, wished at once to construct a hut of palm 
branches close to the clear spring, as is always done 
in the books ; he was also positively yearning to light 
a fire in the manner customary amongst orthodox 
castaways, by using my spectacles as a burning-glass. 
With regard to the necessary commissariat arrange- 
ments, he pointed out that there were abundant Avo- 
cado pear trees in the vicinity, which would furnish 
"Midshipman's butter," whilst the bread-fruit tree 
would satisfactorily replace the baker, and the Aki 
fruit form an excellent substitute for eggs. He en- 
larged on the innumerable other vegetable conveni- 
ences of the island, and declared that it was almost 
flying in the face of Providence for a sea-captain to 
neglect to lose his ship in so ideal a spot. 

Whilst watching the little boys playing football in 
a temperature of 90°, we noticed an unusual adjunct 
to a football field. A great pile of unripe, green co- 
coa-nuts (called "water-cocoa-nuts' ' in Jamaica) lay 



186 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

in one corner, with a negro boy standing guard over 
them. Up would trot a dripping little white urchin, 
and pant out, "Please open me a nut, Arthur," and 
with one stroke of his machete the young negro would 
decapitate a nut, which the little fellow would drain 
thirstily and then rush back to his game. The school- 
master told me that he always gave his boys cocoa-nut 
water at their dinner, as it never causes a chill, and 
as there were thousands of trees growing round the 
school, it was an inexpensive luxury. One of the duties 
of Arthur, the negro boy, was to supply the school 
with nuts, and I saw him going up the trees like a 
monkey, with the aid of a sling of rope round his leg. 
I and my nephew went out fishing on the reef at 
dawn, before the breeze sprang up. The water was 
like glass, and we could see the bottom quite clearly 
at nine fathoms. It was like fishing in an aquarium. 
The most impossible marine monsters! Turquoise- 
blue fish ; grey and pink fish ; some green and scarlet, 
others as yellow as canaries. We could follow our 
lines right down to the bottom, and see the fish hook 
themselves amongst the jagged coral, till the bottom- 
boards of the boat looked like a rainbow with our 
victims. As the breeze sprang up, the surf started at 
once, and fishing became impossible. We had been 
warned that many of the reef fish were uneatable, 
and that the yellow ones were actively poisonous. We 
were quite proud of our Joseph's-coat-like catch, but 
our henchman, the negro lad Arthur, assured us that 
every fish we had caught was poisonous. We had rea- 
son later to doubt this assertion, as we saw him walk- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 187 

ing home with a splendid parti-coloured string of fish, 
probably chuckling over the white man's credulity. 

The natural surroundings of that school were lovely, 
but the little white boys, who had lived all their lives 
in Jamaica, most likely took it all for granted, and 
thought it quite natural to have their bathing-place 
surrounded by cocoa-nut palms, their playground 
fringed with hibiscus and scarlet poinsettias, and the 
garden a riot of mangoes, bread-fruits, nutmeg and 
cinnamon trees. 

No doubt they thought their school and its grounds 
dull and hideous. On a subsequent voyage home from 
Jamaica, there was on board a very small boy from 
this identical school, on his way to a school in Scotland. 
He seemed about eight ; a little, sturdy figure in white 
cotton shorts. He was really much older, and it was 
curious to hear a deep bass voice (with a strong Scot- 
tish accent) issuing from so small a frame. He was 
a very independent little Scot, wanting no help, and 
quite able to take care of himself. We arrived at 
Bristol in bitterly cold weather, and the boy, who had 
been five years in Jamaica, had only his tropical cloth- 
ing. We left him on the platform of Bristol station, 
a forlorn little figure, shivering in his inadequate white 
cotton shorts, and blue with the unaccustomed cold, to 
commence his battle with the world alone, but still 
declining any assistance in reaching his destination. 
That boy had a brief, but most distinguished career. 
He passed second out of Sandhurst, sweeping the 
board of prizes, including the King's Prize, Lord 
Roberts' Prize, the Sword of Honour, and the riding 



188 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

and shooting prizes. He chose the Indian Army, and 
the 9th Goorkhas as his regiment, a choice he had 
made, as he told me afterwards, since his earliest boy- 
hood, when Rudyard Kipling's books had first opened 
his eyes to a new world. That lad proved to have 
the most extraordinary natural gift for Oriental lan- 
guages. Within two years of his first arrival in India 
he had passed in higher Urdu, in higher Hindi, in 
Punjabi, and in Pushtoo. Norman Kemp had, in ad- 
dition, some curious intuitive faculty for understand- 
ing the Oriental mind, and was a born leader of men. 
He was a wonderful all-round sportsman, and prom- 
ised to be one of the finest soldier- jockeys India has 
ever turned out, for here his light weight and very 
diminutive size were assets. He came to France with 
the first Indian contingent, went through eighteen 
months' heavy fighting there, and then took part in 
the relief of Kut, where he won the M.C. for con- 
spicuous valour on the field, and afterwards gained 
the D.S.O. I have heard him conversing in five dif- 
ferent languages with the wounded Indian soldiers 
in the Pavilion Hospital at Brighton (with the Scot- 
tish accent underlying them all), and noted the thor- 
ough understanding there was between him and the 
men. Young as he was, he had managed to get inside 
the Oriental mind. He was killed in a paltry frontier 
affray, six months after the Armistice. I am con- 
vinced that Norman Kemp would have made a great 
name for himself had he lived. He had the peculiar 
faculty of gaining the confidence of the Oriental, and 
I think that he would have eventually drifted from 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 189 

the Military to the Political or Administrative side 
in India. He was a splendid little fellow. 

Nearly twenty-five years earlier, I had known an- 
other very similar type of young man. He was a 
subaltern in the Norfolk Regiment, and a great school- 
friend of a nephew of mine. Chafing at the monot- 
ony of regimental life, he got seconded, and went 
out to the Nigerian Frontier Field Force. Here that 
young fellow of twenty-two, who had hitherto con- 
fined his energies to playing football and boxing, 
proved himself not only a natural leader of men, but 
a born administrator as well. He quickly gained the 
confidence of his Haussa troops, and then set to work 
to improve the sanitary conditions of Jebba, where 
he was stationed. He equipped the town with a good 
water-supply, as well as with a system of drainage, 
and planted large vegetable gardens, so that the Euro- 
pean residents need no longer be entirely dependent 
on tinned foods. It was Ronald Buxton, too, who 
first had the idea of building houses on tripods of rail- 
way metals, to raise them above the deadly ground- 
mists. Thanks to him, the place became reasonably 
healthy, and his powers of organisation being quickly 
recognised, he was transferred from the Military to 
the Administrative side. His whole heart was in his 
work. Like young Kemp, Buxton always stayed in 
my house when on leave. Though the most tempting 
invitations to shoot and to hunt rained in on him 
whilst in England, he was always fretting and chafing 
to be back at work in his pestilential West African 
swamp, where he lived on a perpetual diet of bully 



190 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

beef and yams in a leaky native grass-built hut. Like 
young Kemp, he was absolutely indifferent to the 
ordinary comforts of life, and appeared really to en- 
joy hardships, and they were both quite insensible 
to the attractions of money. He was killed in the 
South African War, or would, I am sure, have had a 
most distinguished Colonial career. These two young 
men seemed created to be pioneers in rough lands. 
As far as my own experience goes, it is only these 
j Islands that produce young men of the precise stamp 
of Norman Kemp and Ronald Buxton. 



CHAPTER VII 

Appalling ignorance of geography amongst English people — 
Novel pedagogic methods — "Happy Families" — An in- 
structive game — Bermuda — A waterless island — A most in- 
viting archipelago — Bermuda the most northern coral-atoll 
— The reefs and their polychrome fish — A "water-glass" — 
Sea-gardens — An ideal sailing place — How the Guardsman 
won his race — A miniature Parliament — Unfounded asper- 
sions on the Bermudians — Red and blue birds — Two pardon- 
able mistakes — Soldier gardeners — Officers* wives — The 
little roaming home-makers — A pleasant island — The in- 
quisitive German Naval Officers— "The Song of the Ber- 
mudians." 

The crass ignorance of the average Englishman about 
geography is really appalling. He neither knows, 
nor wants to know, anything about it, and oddly 
enough seems to think that there is something rather 
clever about his dense ignorance. This ignorance ex- 
tends to our statesmen, as we know by the painful 
experience of some of our treaties, which can only 
have been drawn up by men grossly ignorant of the 
parts of the world about which they were supposed 
to be negotiating. I quite admit that geography is 
almost ignored in our schools, and yet no branch of 
knowledge can be made so attractive to the young, 
and, taught in conjunction with history, as it should 
be, none is of higher educational value. At the re- 
quest of two clerical friends, I gave some geography 
lessons last year to the little boys in their schools. 
My methods were admittedly illegitimate. In the 

191 



192 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

course of the last fifteen years I have sent hundreds 
of coloured picture-postcards of places all over the 
world, in Asia, Africa, Europe and America, to a 
small great-nephew of mine, now of an age when 
such things no longer appeal to him. Armed with 
my big bundle of postcards, and with another parcel 
as well, I tackled my small pupils. I never spoke of 
them of a place without showing them a set of views 
of it, for I have a theory that the young remember 
more by the eye than by the ear. In this way a place- 
name conveyed to them a definite idea, for they had 
seen half-a-dozen somewhat garishly coloured pre- 
sentments of it. The young love colour. Then my 
second method came into play. "Evans, what did 
I tell you last time grew in Jamaica?" "Sugar and 
coffee, sir." "Next boy, what else?" "Pepper, salt 
and mustard, sir." "Young idiot! Next boy." "Co- 
coa, sir, and ginger." "Very good, Oxley. Bring 
me that long parcel there. There is enough preserved 
ginger for two pieces for each boy; Ellis, who gave 
a silly answer, gets none." "Baker, what fruit did I 
tell you grew in the West Indies?" "Pineapples, 
sir." "Very good, Baker. Bring me those two tins 
of pineapple and the tin-opener. Plenty for you 
all." My lessons were quite enormously popular with 
my pupils, though the matron complained that the 
boys seemed liable to bilious attacks after them. 

In the days of my childhood, some ingenious per- 
son had devised a game known as "Educational Quar- 
tettes." These "quartettes" were merely another 
form of the game of "Happy Families," which seems 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 193 

to make so persistent an appeal to the young. Every 
one must be familiar with it. The underlying prin- 
ciple is that any possessor of one card of any family 
may ask another player for any missing card of the 
suit ; in this way the whereabouts of the cards can be 
gradually ascertained, and "Mr. Bones the Butcher" 
finds himself eventually reunited, doubtless to his 
great joy, to his worthy, if unprepossessing spouse, 
Mrs. Bones, and to his curiously hideous offspring, 
Miss Bones and Master Bones. The same holds good 
with regard to the other families, those of Mr. Bun 
the Baker, Mr. Pots the Painter, and their friends, 
and we can only hope that these families make up in 
moral worth for their painful lack of physical attrac- 
tions. "Educational Quartettes" were played in ex- 
actly the same way. At the age of six, I played them 
every night with my sisters and brother, and the set 
we habitually used was "English Ecclesiastical Archi- 
tecture." In lieu of Mr. Bung the Brewer, we had 
"Norman Style, 1066-1145." Mrs. Bung was re- 
placed by "Massive Columns," Miss Bung by "Round 
Arches," Master Bung by "Dog-tooth Mouldings," 
each one with its picture. The next Quartette was 
"Early English, 1189-1307/' No. 2 being "Clus- 
tered Columns," No. 3 "Pointed Arches," No. 4 
"Lancet Windows," each one again with its picture, 
and so on through the later styles. We had none of 
us the least idea that we were being educated; we 
thought that we were merely playing a game, but the 
information got insensibly absorbed through ear and 
eye, and remained there. 



194 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

Never shall I forget the astonishment of a clergy- 
man who was showing his church to my youngest 
brother and myself, he then being aged nine, and I 
eleven. The Vicar observed that, had we been older, 
we would have found his church very interesting ar- 
chitecturally, when my nine-year-old brother re- 
marked quite casually, "Where we are, it is decorated 
1307-1377, but by the organ it's Early English, 1189- 
1307." The clergyman, no doubt, thought him a pre- 
cocious little prig, but from perpetually playing Ar- 
chitectural Quartettes, this little piece of information 
came instinctively from him, for he had absorbed it 
unconsciously. 

Another set we habitually played was entitled "Fa- 
mous Travellers," and even after the lapse of fifty- 
six years, many of the names still stick in my memory. 
For instance under "North Africa" came 2, Jules 
Gerard ; 3, Barth ; 4, Denham and Clapperton. Jules 
Gerard's name was familiar to me, for was he not, 
like the illustrious Tartarin de Tarascon, a tueur de 
lions? It was, indeed, Jules Gerard's example which 
first fired the imagination of the immortal Tarascon- 
nais, though personally I confess to a slight feeling of 
disappointment at learning from Gerard's biographer 
that, in spite of his grandiloquent title, his total bag 
of lions in eleven years was only twenty-five. As to 
the German, Heinrich Barth, my knowledge of him 
is of the slightest, and I plead guilty to complete ig- 
norance about Denham and Clapperton's exploits, 
though their names seem more suggestive of a firm 
of respectable family solicitors or of a small railway 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 195 

station on a branch line, than of two distinguished 
travellers. The main point is that after an interval 
of more than half a century, these names should have 
stuck in my memory, thus testifying to the educational 
value of the game. I wish that some educationalist, 
taking advantage of the proved liking of children for 
this form of game, would revive these Quartettes, for 
there is an immense advantage in a child learning un- 
consciously. I think that geography could be easily 
taught in this way; for instance: 1. France (capital 
Paris). 2. Lyons and Marseilles. 3. Bordeaux and 
Rouen. 4. Lille and Strasbourg. Coloured maps 
or views of the various cities would be indispensable, 
for I still maintain that a child remembers through 
its eyes. In my youth I was given a most excellent 
little manual of geography entitled Near Home, em- 
bellished with many crude woodcuts. The book had 
admittedly an extremely strong religious bias, but it 
was written in a way calculated to interest the young, 
and thanks to the woodcuts most of its information 
got permanently absorbed. Perhaps some one with 
greater experience in such matters than I can pre- 
tend to, may devise a more effectual scheme for com- 
bating the crass ignorance of most English people 
about geography. 

Should one ask the average Englishman where Ber- 
muda is, he would be certain to reply, "Somewhere 
in the West Indies," which is exactly where it is not. 

This fascinating archipelago of coral islands forms 
an isolated little group in the North Atlantic, six 
hundred miles from the United States, three thou- 



196 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

sand miles from Europe, and twelve hundred miles 
north of the West Indies. Bermuda is the second 
oldest British Colonial possession, ranking only after 
Newfoundland, which was discovered by John Cabot 
in 1497, and occupied in the name of Queen Eliza- 
beth in 1583. Sir George Somers being wrecked on 
Bermuda in 1609, at once retaliated by annexing the 
group, though, as there is not one drop of water on 
any of the islands, there were naturally no aboriginal 
inhabitants to dispute his claim. 

Bermuda is to me a perpetual economic puzzle, for 
it seems to defy triumphantly all the rules which gov- 
ern other places. Here is a group of islands whose 
total superficies is only 12,500 acres, of which little 
more than one-tenth is capable of cultivation. There 
; is no fresh water whatever, the inhabitants being en- 
tirely dependent on the rainfall for their supply ; and 
yet some 22,000 people, white and coloured, live there 
in great prosperity, and there is no poverty what- 
ever. I almost hesitate before adding that there are 
no taxes in Bermuda beyond a 10 per cent, a d valorem 
duty on everything imported into the islands except 
foodstuffs ; for the housing accommodation is already 
rather overstrained, and should this fact become gen- 
erally known, I apprehend that there would be such 
an influx into Bermuda from the United Kingdom of 
persons desirous of escaping from our present crush- 
ing burden of taxation, that the many caves of the 
archipelago would all have to be fitted up as lodging- 
houses. The real explanation of the prosperity of 
the islands is probably to be found in the wonderful 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 197 

fertility of the soil, which produces three crops a year, 
and in the immense tourist traffic during the winter 
! months. 

The islands were originally settled in rather a curi- 
ous way. Certain families, my own amongst them, 
took shares in the "Bermuda Company," and each 
undertook to plant a little "tribe" there. These 
"tribes" seem to have come principally from Norfolk 
and Lincolnshire, as is shown by the names of the 
principal island families. The Triminghams, the 
Tuckers, the Inghams, the Pennistones, and the Out- 
erbridges have all been there since the early sixteen 
hundreds. Probably nowhere in the world is the 
jcolour-line drawn more rigidly than in Bermuda; 
rwhite and coloured never meet socially, and there are 
{separate schools for white and black children. This 
is, of course, due to the instinct of self-preservation; 
in so small a community it would have been impossible 
otherwise for the white settlers to keep their blood 
pure for three hundred years. The names of the 
different parishes show the families who originally 
took shares in the Bermuda Company; Pembroke, 
Devonshire, Hamilton, Warwick, Paget, and Somer- 
set amongst others. 

They are the most delightful islands imaginable. 
The vegetation is sub-tropical rather than tropical, 
i and all the islands are clothed with a dense growth of 
Bermudian cedar (really a juniper), and of oleander. 
I have never seen a sea of deeper sapphire-blue, and 
this is reflected not from above, but from below, and 
is due to the bed of white coral sand beneath the water. 



198 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

On the dullest day the water keeps its deep-blue tint, 
When the oleanders are in bloom, the/ milk-white 
houses, peeping out from this sheet of rose-pink, with 
the deep indigo of the sea, and the sombre green of 
the cedars, make one of the most enchanting pictures 
that it is possible to imagine. 

Bermuda has distinctly an island climate, which is 
perhaps fortunate, as the inhabitants are entirely de- 
pendent on rain-water. With a north wind there is 
brilliant sunshine tempered by occasional terrific 
downpours. With a south wind there is a perpetual 
warm drizzle varied with heavy showers. With a west 
wind the weather is apt to be uncertain, but I was as- 
sured that an east wind brought settled, fine weather. 
I never recollect an east wind in Bermuda, but my 
climatic reminiscences only extend to the winter 
months. 

Bermuda is the most northern coral-atoll existing, 
and is the only place where I have actually seen the 
coral insect at work on the reefs. He is not an insect 
at all, but a sort of black slug. These curious crea- 
tures have all an inherited tendency to suicide, for 
when the coral-worm gets above the tide-level he dies. 
Still they work bravely away, obsessed with the idea 
of raising their own particular reef well out of the 
water at the cost of their own lives. The coral of a 
reef is an ugly brown substance which has been ineler 
gantly compared to a decayed tooth. Not until the 
coral is pulverised does it take on its milk-white col- 
our. I am told by learned people that Bermuda, like 
most coral islands, is of iEolian formation; that is, 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 199 

that the powdered coral has been gradually deposited 
by the winds of countless centuries until it has risen 
high out of the water. Farther south in the tropics, 
we know what happens. Nature has given the cocoa- 
nut the power of preserving its vitality almost indefi- 
nitely. The fallen nuts float on the sea and drift 
hither and thither. Once washed up on a beach and 
dried by the sun, the nut thrusts out little green 
suckers from those "eyes" which every one must have 
noticed on cocoa-nuts, anchors itself firmly into the 
soil, and in seven years will be bearing fruit. The 
fallen fronds decay and make soil, and so another is- 
land becomes gradually clothed with vegetation. In 
Bermuda the cedar replaces the cocoa-nut palm. 

Fishing on the reefs in Bermuda is the best fun 
imaginable for persons not liable to sea-sickness. The 
fisherman has in his left hand a "water-glass," which 
is merely a stout box with the bottom filled in with 
plate-glass. The water-glass must be held below the 
ripple of the surface, which, by the way, requires a 
fair amount of muscular effort, when through the 
pane of glass, the sea-floor ten fathoms below is clearly 
visible. The coloured fish of Jamaica were neutral- 
tinted pigmies compared to the polychrome monsters 
on a Bermudian reef, and one could actually see them 
swallowing one's bait. One of the loveliest fishes that 
swims is the Bermudian angel-fish, who has the fur- 
ther merit of almost equalling a sole when fried. 
Shaped like a John Dory, he has a lemon-coloured 
body with a back of brilliant turquoise-blue, which 
gleams in the water like vivid blue enamel. He is fur- 



200 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

ther decorated with two long orange streamers. The 
angel-fish, having a very small mouth, must be fished 
for with a special hook. Then there is the queen- 
turbot, shaded from dark blue to palest turquoise, re- 
minding one of Lord's Cricket Ground at an Eton 
and Harrow match ; besides pink fish, scarlet fish, and 
orange fish, which when captured make the bottom- 
boards of the boat look like a Futurist landscape, not 
to speak of horrible, spotted, eel-like creatures whose 
bite is venomous. Reef -fishing is full of exciting inci- 
dents, but its chief attraction is the amazing beauty 
of the sea-gardens as seen through the water-glass, 
with sponges and sea-fans of every hue, gently wav- 
ing in the current far below, as fish of all the colours 
of the rainbow play in and out of them in the clear 
blue water. 

At Bermuda I found my old friend, the Guards- 
man, established at Government House as A.D.C. 
The island is one of the most ideal places in the world 
for boat-sailing, and the Guardsman had taken up 
yacht racing with his usual enthusiasm; atoning for 
his lack of experience by a persistent readiness to take 
the most hideous risks. The CO. of the British bat- 
talion then stationed in Bermuda was rather hard put 
to it to find sufficient employment for his men, owing 
to the restricted area of the island. He encouraged, 
therefore, their engagements in civilian capacities, as 
it not only put money into the men's pockets, but kept 
them interested. At Government House we had sol- 
dier-gardeners, soldier-grooms, a soldier cowman, and 
a soldier-footman. The footman was a Southampton 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 201 

lad, and having been employed as a boy in a racing- 
yacht on the Solent, was a most useful man in a boat, 
and the Guardsman had accordingly annexed him as 
one of his racing crew, regardless of the fact that his 
labours afloat rather interfered with the specific do- 
mestic duties ashore for which he had been engaged by 
the Governor. A hundred-year-old yacht had for many 
years been handed over from Governor to Governor. 
The Lady of the Isles was Bermudian-rigged and 
Bermudian-built of cedar-wood. She had great beam, 
and was very lightly sparred, having a correspond- 
ingly small sail-area, but in spite of her great age she 
was still absolutely sound and was a splendid sea-boat. 
The Bermudian rig had been evolved to meet local 
conditions. Imagine a cutter with one single long 
spar in the place of a mast and topmast; this spar is 
stepped rather farther aft than it would be in an or- 
dinary cutter, and there is one huge mainsail, "leg- 
of-mutton" shaped, with a boom but no gaff, and a 
very large jib. Owing to their big head-sails, and to 
their heavy keels, these Bermudian craft fore-reach 
like a steamer, and hardly ever miss stays. For the 
same reason they are very wet, as they bury them- 
selves in the water. A handsome silver cup had been 
presented by a visitor for a yacht race right round 
the Bermudas, and the Guardsman managed to per- 
suade the Governor to enter his centenarian yacht for 
this race, and to confide the sailing of her to himself. 
The ancient Lady of the Isles got a very liberal time 
allowance on account of her age and her small spread 
of canvas, but to every one but the Guardsman it 



202 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

seemed like entering a Clydesdale for the Derby. He 
had already formulated his plan, but kept it strictly 
to himself; for its success half a gale of wind was 
necessary. I agreed to sail with him, and as the start 
was to be at 6 a.m. I got up three mornings running 
at 4 a.m., and found myself with Joss, the Guards- 
man, and the soldier-footman on the water-front at 
half -past five in the morning, only to discover that 
there was not the faintest breath of air, and that 
Hamilton Harbour lay one unruffled sheet of lapis- 
lazuli in a flat calm ; a state of things I should imagine 
unparalled in "the still vexed Bermoothes." (How on 
earth did Shakespeare ever come to hear of Ber- 
muda?) Three days running the race was declared 
"off," so when the Guardsman awoke me on the fourth 
morning with the news that it was blowing a full gale, 
I flatly declined to move, and turned over and went to 
sleep again, thereby saving my nerves a considerable 
trial. 

Government House has a signal-station of its own, 
and at ten o'clock a message arrived announcing that 
the Lady of the Isles was leading by four miles. The 
Governor, who had never taken his old yacht's entry 
seriously, grew tremendously excited, ordered a light 
trap and two fast ponies round, and he and I, 
equipped with telescopes and sandwiches, spent the 
rest of the day tearing from one end of the island to 
the other, now on the south shore, now on the north 
shore, lying on our stomachs with telescopes to our 
eyes. It was quite true that the old centenarian had 
a tremendous lead, which was gradually decreased as 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 203 

the day went on. Still, the Guardsman, with face 
and hands the colour of a copper kettle, appeared 
triumphantly at dinner with a large silver cup which 
he presented with a bow to Lady Wodehouse, the 
Governor's wife, whilst the soldier-footman, burnt 
redder than the Reddest of Indians above his white 
shirt and tie, grinned sympathetically as he busied 
himself over his duties with the cauliflowers and po- 
tatoes. What had happened was this: the race was 
right round the islands, without any mark-boats to 
round. There was a very heavy sea running, and 
great breakers were washing over the reefs. The 
other yachts all headed for the "gate," or opening in 
the reefs, but the Guardsman, a keen hunting man, 
knowing that alone of the competitors the old Lady 
of the Isles had no "fin-keel," had determined to try 
and jump the reef. In spite of the frantic protests 
of the black pilot, he headed straight for the reef, 
and, watching his opportunity, put her fairly at it as 
a big sea swept along, and got over without a scrape, 
thus gaining six miles. It was a horribly risky pro- 
ceeding, for had they bumped, the old yacht would 
have gone to pieces, and the big sharks lie hungrily 
off the reefs. The one chance for the broad-beamed 
old boat, with her small sail-area, was a gale of wind, 
for here her wonderful qualities as a sea-boat came 
in. I often sailed in races with the Guardsman in a 
smaller modern boat, much to the detriment of my 
nervous system, for he was incorrigible about taking 
risks, in which he was abetted by the soldier-footman, 
a sporting youth who, being always given a pecuniary 



204 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

interest in the races, was quite willing to take chances. 
The Guardsman, as a hunting man, never seemed to 
realise that a yacht had not the same jumping powers 
as a horse, and that a reef was a somewhat formidable 
barrier to tackle. 

Owing to Bermudian boats being so "wet," one 
always landed soaked to the skin, and in any town 
but Hamilton, people would have stared at seeing 
three drowned rats in white garments, clinging like 
tights, making their dripping way home through the 
streets; but there it is such an everyday occurrence 
that no one even turned their heads ; and, as the sol- 
dier-footman was fond of observing, "It's comfortable 

j feeling as 'ow you're so wet that you can't get no 

* wetter no'ow." 

Bermuda has its own little Parliament of thirty-six 
members, the oldest Parliament in the New World. 
It really is an ideal Chamber, for every one of the 
thirty-six members sit on the Government side; there 
is no Opposition. The electors do not seem to favour 
youthful representatives, for the heads of the legis- 
lators were all white or grey, and there seemed in the 
atmosphere a wholesome mistrust of innovations. 
There was great popular excitement over a Bill for 
permitting the use of motor-cars in the islands, a Bill 
to which public opinion was dead opposed. There 
was some reason in this opposition. The roads in Ber- 
muda are excellent, but they are all made of coral, 
which becomes very slippery when wet. The roads 
twist a great deal, and the island is hilly, and the farm- 
ers complained that they could never get their great 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 205 

wagons of vegetables (locally called "garden-truck") 
down to the harbour in safety should motor-cars be 
permitted. I well remember one white-headed old 
gentleman thundering out: "Our fathers got on with- 
out all these new-fangled notions, and what was good 
enough for my father is good enough for me, Mr. 
Speaker," a sentiment which provoked loud outbursts 
| of applause. Another patriarch observed: "As it was 
in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, is our motto 
in Bermuda, Mr. Speaker," a confession of faith 
which was received by the House with rapturous en- 
thusiasm ; so, by thirty-three votes to three, all motors 
were declared illegal in the islands. 

I do not apprehend that there will ever be a short- 
age of building materials in Bermuda, for this is how 
a house is built. The whole formation being of coral, 
the stones are quarried on the actual site of the house, 
the hole thus created being cemented and used as a 
cistern for the rain-water from the roof. The accom- 
modating coral is as soft as cheese when first cut, but 
hardens after some months' exposure to the air. The 
soft stones are shaped as wanted, together with thin 
slabs of coral for the roof, and are then all left to 
harden. When finished, the entire house, including 
the roof, is whitewashed, the convenient coral also fur- 
nishing the whitening material. 

These white roofs give quite an individual charac- 
ter to a Bermudian landscape, their object, of course, 
being to keep the rain-water supply pure. The men 
and women who live in these houses are really delight- 
ful people, and are all perfectly natural and unaf- 



206 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

fected. They are all, as one might suppose in so 
small a place, inter-related. The men seem to have a 
natural aptitude for cricket, whilst Bermudian girls 
can all dance, swim, play lawn-tennis, and sail boats 
to perfection. On my second visit to the islands, I 
was much struck with one small incident. Two pretty 
sisters were always the first arrivals at the bi-weekly 
hotel dances. I found that they lived on the far side 
of Hamilton Harbour, some six miles by road. As 
they could not afford ten dollars twice a week for car- 
riage hire, they put on sea-boots and oilskins over their 
ball-gowns, and then paddled themselves across a mile 
and a half of rough water, shook out their creases and 
touched up their hair on arrival, danced all the eve- 
ning, and then paddled themselves home, whatever 
the weather. Most Bermudian girls, indeed, seem 
quite amphibious. 

I went out the second time with a great friend of 
mine, who was anxious to see her son, then quartered 
in the island. We had attended the Parade Service 
on Sunday at the Garrison Church, and my friend was 
resting on the hotel verandah, when she heard two 
American ladies talking. "My dear," said one of 
them, "you ought to have come up to that Garrison 
Church. I tell you, it was a right smart, snappy, 
dandy little Service, with a Colonel in full uniform 
reading selections from the Bible from a gilt eagle." 

Amongst other interesting people I saw a good deal 
of at that time in Bermuda was "Mark Twain," who 
had, however, begun to fail, and that most cultivated 
and delightful of men, the late William Dean How- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 207 

ells. I twice met at luncheon a gentleman who, I was 
told, might possibly be adopted as Democratic Can- 
didate for the Presidency of the United States. His 
name was Dr. Woodrow Wilson. 

Many country houses in Bermuda have pieces of 
old Chippendale and French furniture in them, as 
well as fine specimens of old French and Spanish 
silver. I entirely discredit the malicious rumours I 
have heard about the origin of these treasures. All 
male Bermudians were seafaring folk in the eigh- 
teenth century, and ill-natured people hint that these 
intrepid mariners, not content with their legitimate 
trading profits, were occasionally not averse to — a lit- 
tle maritime enterprise. These scandalmongers in- 
sinuate that in addition to the British Ensign under 
which they sailed, another flag of a duskier hue was 
kept in a convenient locker, and was occasionally 
hoisted when the owner felt inclined to indulge his 
tastes as a collector of works of art, or to act as a 
Marine Agent. I do not believe one word of it, and 
emphatically decline to associate such kindly people 
with such dubious proceedings, even if a hundred and 
fifty years have elapsed since then. 

These merchant-traders conducted their affairs on 
the most patriarchal principles. They built their own 
schooners of their own cedar-wood, and sailed them 
themselves with a crew of their own black slaves. The 
invariable round-voyage was rather a complicated one. 
The first stage was from Bermuda in ballast to Turks' 
Island, in the British Caicos group. At Turks' Is- 
land for two hundred years salt has been prepared 



208 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

by evaporating sea-water. The Bermudian owner 
filled up with salt, and sailed for the Banks of New- 
foundland, where he disposed of his cargo of salt to 
the fishermen for curing their cod, and loaded up with 
salt-fish, with which he sailed to the West Indies. 
Salt-fish has always been, and still is, the staple article 
of diet of the West Indian negro ; so, his load of salt- 
fish being advantageously disposed of, he filled up 
with sugar, coffee, rum, and other tropical produce, 
and left for New York, where he found a ready sale 
for his cargo. At New York he loaded up with manu- 
factured goods and "Yankee notions," and returned 
to Bermuda to dispose of them, thus completing the 
round trip; but I still refuse to credit the story of 
other and less legitimate developments of mercantile 
enterprise. Of course, should Britain be at war with 
either France or Spain, and should a richly loaded 
French or Spanish merchantman happen to be over- 
taken, things might obviously be a little different. 
The Bermudian owner might then feel it his duty to 
relieve the vessel of any objects of value to avoid 
tempting the cupidity of others less scrupulous than 
himself ; but I cannot believe that this was an habitual 
practice, and should the dusky flag ever have been 
hoisted, I feel certain that it was only through sheer 
inadvertence. 

I know of one country house in Bermuda where the 
origin of all the beautiful things it contains is above 
all suspicion. The house stands on a knoll overlook- 
ing the ultramarine waters of Hamilton Harbour, 
and is surrounded by a dense growth of palms, fiddle 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 209 

\ trees, and spice trees. The rooms are panelled in 
| carved cedar-wood, and there is charming "grillage" 
iron- work in the fanlights and outside gates. There 
is an old circular-walled garden with brick paths, a 
perfect blaze of colour; and at the back of the house, 
which is clothed in stephanotis and "Gloire de Dijon" 
roses, an avenue of flaming scarlet poinsettias leads 
to the orchard: it is a delightful, restful, old-world 
place, which, together with its inhabitants, somehow 
still retains its eighteenth-century atmosphere. 

The red and blue birds form one of the attrac- 
tions of Bermuda. The male red bird, the Cardinal 
Grosbeak, a remarkably sweet songster, wears an en- 
tire suit of vivid carmine, and has a fine tufted crest of 
the same colour, whilst his wife is dressed more soberly 
in dull grey bordered with red, just like a Netley nurs- 
ing sister. The blue birds have dull red breasts like 
our robins, with turquoise-blue backs and wings, glint- 
ing with the same metallic sheen on the blue that the 
angel-fish display in the water. As with our king- 
fishers, one has the sense of a brilliant flash of blue 
light shooting past one. The red and blue birds are 
very accommodating, for they often sit on the same 
tree, making startling splashes of colour against the 
sombre green of the cedars. That the light blue may 
not have it all its own way, there is the kidigo bird 
as well, serving as a reminder of Oxford and Har- 
row, and pretty little ground-doves, the smallest of 
the pigeon family, as well as the "Chick-of -the- Vil- 
lage," a most engaging little creature. Unfortunately 
some one was injudicious enough to import the Eng- 



210 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

lish house-sparrow: these detestable little birds, whose 
instincts are purely mischievous and destructive, like 
all useless things, have increased at an enormous rate, 
and are gradually driving the beautiful native birds 
away. All these birds were wonderfully tame till 
the hateful sparrows began molesting them. I am 
glad to say that a fine of £5 is levied on any one kill- 
ing or capturing a red or blue bird, and I only wish 
that a reward were given for every sparrow killed. 
That pleasant writer "Bartimseus," has in his book 
Unreality drawn a very sympathetic picture of Ber- 
muda under the transparent alias of "Somer's Is- 
land." He, too, has obviously fallen a victim to its 
charms, and duly comments on the blue birds, which 
Maeterlinck could find here in any number without 
a lengthy and painstaking quest. 

As a boy, whilst exploring rock-pools at low water 
on the west coast of Scotland, I used to think long- 
ingly of the rock-pools in warm seas, which I pictured 
to myself as perfect treasure-houses of marine curi- 
osities. They are most disappointing. Neither in 
Bermuda, nor in the West Indies, nor even on the 
Cape Peninsula, where the Indian and Atlantic 
Oceans meet, could I find anything whatever in the 
rock-pools. To adopt the Sunday School child's word, 
there seem to be no "tindamies" on the beaches of 
warm seas. Every one must have heard of the little 
girl who got her first glimpse of the sea on a Sunday 
School excursion. The child seemed terribly disap- 
pointed at something, and in answer to her teacher's 
question, said that she liked the sea, "but please where 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 211 

were the 'tindamies' ? I was looking forward so to the 
tindamies!" Pressed for an explanation the little girl 
repeated from the Fourth Commandment, "In six 
days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all 
the tindamies.'' Tindamies is quite a convenient word 
for star-fish, crabs, cuttle-fish and other flotsam and 
jetsam of the beach. 

The Sunday School child's mistake is rather akin 
to that of the old Sussex shepherd who had never 
had a day's illness in his life. When at last he did 
take to his bed, it was quite obvious that he would 
never leave it again. The vicar of the parish visited 
him almost daily to read to him. The old man always 
begged the clergyman to read him the hymn, "The 
roseate hues of early dawn." At the tenth request 
for the reading of this hymn the clergyman asked 
him what it was in the lines that made such an ap- 
peal to him. "Ah, sir," answered the old shepherd, 
"here I lie, and I know full well that I shall never 
get up again; but when you reads me that beautiful 
'ymn, I fancies myself on the downs again at day- 
break, and can just see 'Them rows of ewes at early 
dawn'!" 

Had the old shepherd lived in Bermuda instead 
of in Sussex, that is a sight which he would never have 
seen, for the local grass, though it appears green 
enough to the eye, is a coarse growth which crackles 
under the feet and contains no nutriment whatever 
as pasture; so all cows have to be fed on imported 
hay, rendering milk very costly. For the same rea- 
son all meat and butter have to be imported, and their 



212 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

price even in pre-war days was sufficiently staggering. 
The high cost of living and the myriads of mosquitoes 
are the only draw-backs to life in these Delectable 
Islands. That no systematic effort to exterminate 
mosquitoes has ever been made in Bermuda is to me 
incomprehensible, for these mosquitoes are all of the 
Stegomyia, or yellow-fever-carrying variety. The 
Americans have shown, both in the Canal Zone and 
in Havana, that with sufficient organisation it is quite 
possible to extirpate these dangerous pests, and the 
Bermudians could not do better than to follow their 
example. 

Our soldier-gardeners at Government House had 
their own methods, and were inclined to attach im- 
portance to points considered trivial by civilians. The 
men were laying out a new vegetable garden for the 
Governor, and I went with the corporal one evening 
to inspect progress. The corporal, after glancing at 
the new-planted rows of vegetables, shook his head 
in deep sadness. " 'Arris, 'Arris, I'm surprised at 
you ! Look at the dressing of that there rear rank of 
lettuces. Up with them all!" and I had to point out 
that the lettuces would grow quite as well, and prove 
just as succulent, even should they not happen to 
be in strict alignment, and that the dressing was only 
important at a subsequent stage. I laid out a new 
border to the approach for the Governor, with the 
help of four soldiers, and it was really rather a suc- 
cessful piece of work. I began with a large group of 
Kentia and Chamseropes palms, after which came a 
patch of bright yellow crotons, giving place to a 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 213 

thicket of a white-foliaged Mexican shrub, followed 
by a mass of crimson and orange crotons and copper- 
coloured coleus, which arrangement I repeated. What 
with scarlet poinsettias, many-hued hibiscus, and the 
pretty native orange pigeon-berry, I got quite an 
amount of colour into my border. 

Pretty as are the gardens of Government House, 
they have to yield the palm to those of Admiralty 
House, which have been carefully tended by genera- 
tions of admirals. Bartimaeus in Unreality grows 
quite enthusiastic over these gardens, though he does 
not mention their three peculiarities. One is a foun- 
tain, the only one in the islands. As there is not one 
drop of fresh water, this fountain has its own catch- 
ment area, and its own special rain-water tank. My 
own idea is that the Admiral reserves its playing for 
the visits of foreign naval men, to delude them into the 
idea that Bermuda has an abundant water supply. 
The second unusual feature is a series of large cham- 
bers hewn out of the solid rock, with openings towards 
the sea. These caves were cut out by convict labour as 
a refuge from the fierce heat of the summer months. 
The third is a flat tombstone by the lawn-tennis 
ground, inscribed "Here lies a British Midshipman 
1810," nothing more; no name, no age, no particulars. 
I have often wondered how that forlorn, nameless, 
ageless midshipman came to be lying in the Admiral's 
garden. He was probably drowned and washed 
ashore without anything to identify him, so they buried 
him where they found him. 

The particular white battalion quartered in Ber- 



214 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

muda during my first visit there was very fortunate 
in its ladies, for it had an unusual proportion of mar- 
ried officers. I have the greatest admiration for these 
plucky little women who accompany their husbands 
all over the globe, and who always seem to manage, 
however narrow their means, to create a cheerful and 
attractive little home for their menkind. They all 
appeared able to dress themselves well, though, if 
the truth were known, they were probably mostly 
their own dressmakers, and, owing to the servant diffi- 
culty in Bermuda, their own cooks as well; they had 
transformed their little white-washed houses into the 
most inviting little dwellings, and in spite of having 
to do a great part of their own housework, they al- 
ways managed to look pretty and charming. The 
average wife of the average officer of a Line regiment 
is a wonderful little woman. 

The supper-parties in the married officers' quarters 
at Prospect Camp were the cheeriest entertainments 
I have ever been at. Every one had to contribute 
something. My own culinary attainments being con- 
fined to the preparation of three dishes, I was com- 
pelled to repeat them monotonously. The subalterns 
were made to carry the dishes from the kitchen, and 
to "wash-up" afterwards, yet I am sure that the aver- 
age London hostess would have envied the jollity, 
the fun and high spirits that made those informal 
supper-parties so delightful, and would have given 
anything to introduce some of this cheery atmosphere 
into her own decorous and extremely dull entertain- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 215 

merits, where the guests did not have to cook their 
own dinners. 

I gave a dinner-party at an hotel to eleven people, 
all officers or officers' wives. The conversation turned 
on birthplaces, and the answers given were so curious, 
that I wrote them all down. Not only were all my 
guests soldiers and soldiers' wives, but they) were 
nearly all the sons and daughters of soldiers as well. 
One major had been born at Cape Town; his very 
comely wife in Barbados. The other major had 
been born at Meerut in India, his wife at Quebec, and 
her unmarried sister in Mauritius ; and so it was with 
all of them. Of those twelve people of pure British 
blood, I was the only one who had been born in Eng- 
land or in Europe ; even the subaltern had been born 
Un Hong-Kong. I do not thing that stay-at-homes 
quite realise the existence of this little world of people 
journeying from end to end of the earth in the course 
of their duty, and taking it all as a matter of course. 

I regret that the Imperial West India Direct Line 
should now be defunct, for this gave a monthly direct 
service between Bristol and Bermuda, and I can con- 
ceive of no pleasanter winter quarters for those de- 
sirous of escaping the rigours of an English January 
and February. Ten days after leaving Bristol, ten 
days it must be confessed of extremely angry seas, 
the ship dropped her anchor in Grassy Bay, and the 
astonished arrival from England found ripe straw- 
berries, new peas, and new potatoes awaiting his good 
pleasure. No visitor could fail to be delighted with 
the pretty, prosperous little island, and with its genial 



216 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

and hospitable inhabitants. For Americans, too, the 
place was a godsend, for in forty-eight hours they 
could escape from the extreme and fickle climate of 
New York, and find themselves in warm sunshine, 
tempered, it is true, by occasional downpours, for 
Nature, realising that the inhabitants were dependent 
on the rainfall for their water supply, did her best to 
I avoid any shortage of this necessity of life. Cana- 
dians had also a great liking for the islands, for not 
only were they on their own soil there, but in sixty 
hours they could transport themselves from the ice 
and snow of Montreal and Toronto to a climate where 
roses and geraniums bloomed at Christmas, and where 
orange and lemon trees and great wine-coloured drifts 
of Bougainvillaea mocked at the futile efforts of winter 
to touch them. The Bishop of Bermuda, who also 
included Newfoundland in his See, declared that 
climatically his diocese was absolutely ideal, for he 
passed the six winter months in Bermuda and the re- 
mainder of the year in Newfoundland, thus escaping 
alike the rigorous winters of the northern island and 
the fierce summer heat of the southern one. The 
Bishop himself was a Newfoundlander, as were many 
of the Church of England clergy in Bermuda. A 
humorous friend of mine, a sapper in charge of the 
"wireless," shared to the full my liking for the islands 
and their pleasant inhabitants, but positively detested 
Prospect Camp where he was stationed. Prospect, 
though healthy enough, is wind-swept, very dusty, and 
quite devoid of shade. He declared that the well- 
known hymn should be altered, and ought to run: 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 217 

"What though the Ocean breezes 

Blow o'er Bermuda's isle; 

Where every man is pleasing 

And only Prospect vile." 

Few people seem to realise that Bermuda is a first- 
class fortress, a dockyard, and an important naval 
coaling-station. A glance at the map will show its 
strategic importance. Nature has made it almost 
inaccessible with barrier-reefs, and there is but one 
narrow and difficult entrance off St. George's. This 
entrance is jealously guarded by a heavy battery of 
12 in. and 6 in. guns, and the ten-mile long ship- 
channel inside the reefs from St. George's to the 
Dockyard is very difficult and complicated, though I 
imagine that, with modern guns, a ship could lie 
outside the reefs and shell the islands to pieces. 

The first time that I was in Bermuda, a German 
Training Squadron arrived, with a number of naval 
cadets on board, and announced their intention of re- 
maining ten days. The German officers at once ex- 
hibited a most un-Teutonic keenness about sea-fishing. 
The Governor, fully alive to the advantage a possibly 
hostile power might reap from an independent survey 
and charting of the tortuous and difficult ship-channel 
between St. George's and the Dockyard, at once held 
a consultation with the Senior Naval Officer, in the 
Admiral's absence, and, as a result of this consulta- 
tion, three naval petty officers were detailed to show 
the Germans the best fishing-grounds. At the same 
time naval patrol boats displayed a quite unusual 
activity inside the reefs. Both patrol boats and petty 



218 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

officers had their private orders, and I fancy that these 
steps resulted in very few soundings being taken, and 
in the ship-channel remaining uncharted by our Ger- 
man visitors. I was returning myself, after dark, 
in the ferry-boat plying between the Dockyard and 
Hamilton, when there were four German officers on 
the bridge. Imagining themselves secure in the gen- 
eral ignorance of their language, they were openly 
noting the position of the leading lights, as the little 
steamer threaded her way through the smaller islands 
and "One rock" and "Two rock passage," and all 
these observations were, I imagine, duly entered in 
their pocket-books after landing. In conversation 
with the German officers I was much struck with the 
\ essentially false ideas that they had with regard to 
the position of the motherland and her dependencies. 
They seemed convinced that every Dominion and de- 
pendency was merely waiting for the first favourable 
opportunity to declare its complete independence, and 
they hardly troubled to conceal their opinion that 
Britain was hopelessly decadent, and would never 
be able to wage a campaign again. Bermuda, in view 
of its wonderful strategic position, had, I am con- 
vinced, been marked down as a future German posses- 
sion, when they would have endeavoured to make a 
second Heligoland of it. 

Nowhere could a little population be found more 
loyal to the motherland than in Bermuda, or prouder 
of its common heritage. 

A friend of mine, a lady who had never left the 
islands, wrote some lines which I thought so fine 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 219 

that I set them to music. Her words, though, are so 
much better than my setting, that I will quote them 
in full. 

THE SONG OF THE BERMUDIANS 

The Keepers of the Western Gate 

Queen of the Seas ! Thou hast given us the Keys, 
Proudly do we hold them, we thy Children and akin, 

Though we be nor rich nor great, 

We will guard the Western Gate, 
And our lives shall pay the forfeit ere we let the foeman in. 

Empty are our hands, for we have nor wealth nor lands, 
No grain or gold to give thee, and so few a folk are we; 

Yet in very will and deed, 

We will serve thee at thy need, 
And keep thine ancient fortalice beyond the Western Sea. 

The sea is at our doors, and we front its fretted floors, 
Swept by every wind that listeth, ringed with reefs from rim to 
rim, 

Though we may not break its bars, 

Yet by light of sun or stars 
Our hearts are fain for England, and for her our eyes are dim. 

Sweet Mother, ponder this, lest thy favour we should miss; 
We, the loneliest and least of all thy peoples of the sea. 

With bared heads and proud 

We bless thy name aloud, 
For gift of lowly service, as we guard the gate for thee. 

Those lines, to me, have a fine ring about them. The 
words, "In very will and deed, We will serve thee 
at thy need," were not a mere empty boast, as the 
splendid record of little Bermuda in the years of 
trouble from 1914 to 1918 shows, when almost every 
man of military age, whether white or coloured, vol- 
untarily crossed the Atlantic to help the motherland 
/ in her need ; so let us wish all success to the sun-kissed, 
cedar-clad little islands, and to their genial inhabitants. 



CHAPTER VIII 

The demerits of the West Indies classified — The utter ruin of 
St. Pierre — The Empress Josephine — A transplanted 
brogue — Vampires — Lost in a virgin forest — Dictator- 
Presidents — Castro and Rosas — The mentality of a South 
American — "The Liberator" — The Basques and their na- 
tional game — Love of English people for foreign words — 
Yellow fever — Life on an Argentine estancia — How cattle 
are worked — The lasso and the "bolas" — Ostriches — 
Venomous toads — The youthful rough-rider — His methods 
— Fuel difficulties — The vast plains — The wonderful bird- 
life. 

Any one desirous of seeing an exceedingly beautiful, 
and comparatively unknown, corner of the world, 
should take the fortnightly Inter-colonial steamer 
from Trinidad, and make the voyage "up the islands." 
The Lesser Antilles are very lovely, but there is some- 
thing rather melancholy about them, for they are 
obviously decaying in prosperity; the white planters 
are abandoning them, and as the coloured people take 
their place, externals all begin to assume a shabby, 
unkempt appearance. I am speaking of the condi- 
tions anterior to 1914; the great rise in the price of 
sugar since then may have resulted in a back-wash of 
prosperity affecting both the Windward and the Lee- 
ward Islands. 

I should always myself classify the West India 
islands according to their liability to, or immunity 
from, the various local drawbacks. Thus Barbados, 

220 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 221 

though within the hurricane zone, is outside the earth- 
quake zone, and is free from poisonous snakes. Trini- 
dad, only 200 miles away, is outside the hurricane area, 
but is most distinctly inside the earthquake zone, is 
prolific in venomous snakes and enjoys the further 
advantage of being the home of the blood-sucking 
vampire bat. Jamaica is liable to both hurricanes and 
earthquakes, but has no poisonous snakes. St. Vin- 
cent, St. Lucia and Martinique are really over-full 
of possibilities, for, in addition to a liability to earth- 
quakes and hurricanes, they each possess an active 
volcano, and Martinique and St. Lucia are the habitat 
of the dreaded and deadly Fer-de-Lance snake. 

The Administrator of St. Vincent had been good 
enough to ask me to dinner by telegram. The steamer 
reached St. Vincent after dark, and it was a curious 
experience landing on an unknown island in a tail- 
coat and white tie, driving for two miles, and then 
tumbling into a dinner-party of sixteen white people, 
not one of whom one had ever seen before, or was 
ever likely to meet again. It was as though one had 
been dropped by an aeroplane into an unknown land, 
and when the steamer sailed again before midnight, 
it was all as though it had never been. The orchids 
on that dinner-table were very remarkable, for orchid- 
I growing was the Administrator's hobby. He grafted 
his orchids on to orange trees, and so obtained enor- 
\ mous growths. We measured some of the flower- 
I sprays, the biggest being nine feet long. As they were 
brown and yellow Oncidiums, they were more curious 
than beautiful. 



222 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

The appalling desolation of St. Pierre, in the 
French island of Martinique, cannot be imagined with- 
out having been seen. Of a very handsome city of 
40,000 inhabitants there is absolutely nothing left ex- 
cept one gable of the cathedral. There is no trace of 
a town having ever existed here, for the poisonous 
manchineel tree has spread itself over the ruins, and 
it is difficult to realise that twenty years ago the 
pride of the French West Indies stood here. The rich 
merchants and planters of St. Pierre had all made 
their homes in the valley of the little river Roxelana. 
After the sides of Mont Pele had gaped apart and 
hurled their white-hot whirlwind of fire over the 
doomed town on that fatal May 8, 1902 — a fiery 
whirlwind which calcined every human being and 
every building in the town in less than one minute — 
molten lava poured into the valley of the Roxelana 
until it filled it up entirely, burying houses, gardens 
and plantations alike. There is no trace even of a 
valley now, and the stream makes its way under- 
ground to the sea. Napoleon the Great's first wife, 
Josephine de la Pagerie, was a native of Martinique 
and retained all her life the curious indolence of the 
Creole. Her gross extravagance and her love of lux- 
ury may also have been due to her Creole blood. Her 
first husband, of course, had been the Vicomte de 
Beauharnais, and her daughter, Hortense de Beau- 
harnais, married Napoleon's brother, Louis, King of 
Holland. This complicated relationships, for Queen 
Hortense's son, Louis Napoleon, afterwards Napo- 
leon III., was thus at the same time nephew and step- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 223 

grandson of Napoleon I. M. Filon, in his most in- 
teresting study of the Empress Eugenie, points out 
that Napoleon III. showed his Creole blood in his 
constant chilliness. He chose as his private apart- 
ments at the Tuileries a set of small rooms on the 
ground floor, as these could be more easily heated up 
to the temperature he liked. According to M. Filon, 
Napoleon III. shortened his life by persisting in 
remaining so much in what he describes as "those over- 
gilt, over-heated, air-tight little boxes." 

The well-known greenhouse climbing plant lapa- 
geria, with its waxy white or crimson trumpets of 
flowers, owes its name to Josephine de la Pagerie, 
for on its first introduction into France it was called 
La Pageria in her honour, though with the English 
pronunciation of the name the connection is not at 
first obvious. 

It is not so generally known that Madame de Main- 
tenon, as Francoise d'Aubigne, spent all her girlhood 
in Martinique. 

The coloured women of Martinique have apparently 
absorbed, thanks to their two hundred years' associa- 
tion with the French, something of that innate good 
taste which seems the birthright of most French peo- 
ple, and they show this in their very individual and 
becoming costumes. The Martinique negress is, as a 
rule, a handsome bronze-coloured creature, and she 
wears a full-skirted, flowing dress of flowered chintz 
or cretonne, with a fichu of some contrasting colour 
over her breast. She hides her woolly locks under 
an ample turban of two shades, one of which will 



224 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

exactly match her fichu, whilst the other will either 
correspond to or contrast with the colour of her chintz 
dress, thus producing what the French term "une 
gamme de couleur," most pleasing to the eye, and with 
never a false note in it. Beside these comely, amply 
breasted bronze statues, the British West Indian 
negress, with her absurd travesty of European fash- 
ions, and her grotesque hats, cuts, I am bound to say, 
a very poor figure indeed. 

The flourishing little island of Montserrat has one 

i peculiarity. The negroes all speak with the strongest 
of Irish brogues. Cromwell deported to Montserrat 
many of the "Malignants" from the West of Ireland, 
who acquired negro slaves to cultivate their sugar 

I and cotton. These negroes naturally learnt English 
in the fashion in which their masters spoke it. The 

I white men have gone; the brogue remains. I was 
much amused on going ashore in the Administrator's 
whaleboat, he being an old acquaintance from the Co. 
Tyrone, to hear his jet-black coxswain remark, " 'Tis 
the lee side I will be going, sorr, the way your Honour 
will not be getting wet, for them back-seas are mighty 
throublesome." This in Montserrat was unexpected. 
There is a curious uninhabited rock lying amongst 
the Virgin Islands. It is quite square and box-like 
in shape, and is known as "The Dead Man's Chest." 
Before seeing it I had always thought that the eternal 
chant of the old pirate at the "Admiral Benbow," 
in Treasure Island: 

"Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest, 
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!" 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 225 

referred literally to a seaman's chest, though reflec- 
tion might have shown that one chest would afford 
rather scanty seating-ground for fifteen men. 

At Nevis, the curious can see in Fig Tree Church 
the register attesting the marriage of "Horatio Nel- 
son, Captain of H.M.S. Boreas, to Frances Nisbet, 
widow," on March 11, 1789. William IV., at that 
time Duke of Clarence, was Nelson's best man on 
that occasion. 

Nevis possesses powerful hot mineral springs, and 
a hundred years ago and more was the great health 
resort of white people in the West Indies. Here 
the planters endeavoured to get their torpid livers into 
working order again, and the local boast was that 
for every pearl necklace and pair of diamond shoe- 
buckles to be seen at the English Bath, there were 
three to be seen in Nevis. To add to its attractions 
it was asserted that the drinking, gambling, and duel- 
ling in Nevis left Bath completely in the shade. 

Though one was constantly hearing of diminishing 
trade in the Lesser Antilles, certain questions kept 
suggesting themselves to me. For instance, in islands 
abounding in water power, why ship copra in bulk 
to England or the United States, instead of crushing 
it locally and exporting the oil, which would occupy 
one-tenth of the cargo-space? Why, in an island pro- 
ducing both oranges and sugar, ship them separately 
to Europe to be made into marmalade, instead of 
manufacturing it on the spot? The invariable answer 
to these queries was "lack of capital" ; no one seemed 



226 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

to guess that lack of enterprise might be a contribu- 
tory cause as well. 

I have alluded to the vampire bat of Trinidad. Six 
weeks before my arrival there, the Governor's aide- 
de-camp had most imprudently slept without lowering 
his mosquito curtains. He awoke to find himself 
drenched in blood, for a vampire bat had opened a 
vein, drunk his fill, and then flown off leaving the 
wound open. The doctor had to apply the actual 
cautery to stop the bleeding, and six weeks afterwards 
the unfortunate aide-de-camp was still as white as a 
sheet of paper from loss of blood. At Government 
House, Port-of- Spain, there is a very lofty entrance- 
hall, bright with electric light. The vampires con- 
stantly flew in here, to become helpless at once in 
the glare of light, when they could be easily killed 
with a stick. The vampire is a small, sooty-black bat 
with a perfectly diabolical little face. An ordinary 
mosquito net is quite sufficient protection against them, 
or, to persons who do not mind a light in their room, 
a lamp burning all night is an absolute safeguard 
against their attacks. Every stable in Trinidad has 
a lighted lamp burning all night in it, and those 
who can afford them, drop wire-gauze curtains over 
their horses' stalls as a protection against vampires. 

The Trinidad negro being naturally an indolent 
creature, all the boatmen and cab-drivers in Port-of- 
Spain are Barbadians. As we know, the Badians 
have an inordinate opinion of themselves and of their 
island. Whilst I was in Trinidad, General Baden- 
Powell came there in the course of his world-tour 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 227 

inspection of Boy Scouts. On the day of General 
Baden-Powell's arrival, all the Badian boatmen and 
cab-drivers struck work, and the vampire-bitten aide- 
de-camp, who was in the town, met serried phalanxes 
of dark faces hurrying to the landing-stage. On ask-» 
ing a Badian what the excitement was about, the 
negro answered with infinite hauteur. 

"You ask me dat, sir? You not know dat our great 
countryman General Badian-¥ owell arrive to-day, so 
we all go welcome him." 

Charles Kingsley in At Last goes into rhapsodies 
over the "High Woods" of Trinidad. I confess that 
I was terribly disappointed in them. They are too 
trim and well-kept ; the Forestry department has done 
its work too well. There are broad green rides cut 
through them, reminiscent of covers in an English 
park, but certainly not suggestive of a virgin forest. 
One almost expects to hear the beaters' sticks rattling 
in them, and I did not think that they could compare 
with the splendid virgin forests of Brazil. 

I was in Brazil just thirty years ago with Patrick 
Lyon, brother of the present Lord Strathmore. We 
were staying at Petropolis, and Lyon, fired by my 
accounts of these virgin forests, declared that he must 
see one for himself. He had heard that the forests 
extended to within three miles of Petropolis, and at 
once went to hire two horses for us to ride out there. 
There were no horses to be had in the place, but so 
determined was Lyon to see these untrodden wilds, 
that he insisted on our doing the three miles on foot, 
then and there. It was the height of the Brazilian 



228 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

summer, and the heat was something appalling. We 
struggled over three miles of a glaring white shadeless 
road, grilled alive by the sun, but always comforting 
ourselves by dwelling on the cool shades awaiting us 
at the end of our journey. At length we reached the 
forest, and wandered into a green twilight under the 
dense canopy of leaves, which formed an unbroken 
roof a hundred feet over our heads. With "green 
twilight" the obvious epithet should be "cool"; that 
is exactly what it was not, for if the green canopy 
shut out the sun, it also shut out the air, and the 
heat in that natural leafy cathedral was absolutely 
overpowering. We wandered on and on, till I began 
to grow giddy and faint with the heat. I asked Lyon 
how he was feeling, and he owned that the heat had 
affected him too, so we sat down on a rock to re- 
cuperate. 

"It is a solemn thought," observed Lyon, after a 
long silence, "that we are perhaps the first human 
beings to have set foot in this forest. We simply 
must pull ourselves together, for it might be months 
before any one passed here, and you know what 
that means." I assented gloomily, as I formed melan- 
choly mental pictures of ourselves as two mature 
Babes-in-the-Wood, speculating whether, in the event 
of our demise in these untrodden wilds, any Brazilian 
birds, brilliant of plumage but kindly of heart, would 
cover us up with leaves. These great forest tracts 
were producing an awe-inspiring effect on us as we 
realised our precarious position, when we suddenly 
heard Toot ! toot ! toot ! and to our inexpressible amaze- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 229 

ment we saw a tramcar approaching us through the 
trees. The car came within twenty feet of us, for 
the track had been quite hidden by some rising ground ; 
we hailed it, and returned to Petropolis prosaically 
seated on the front bench of a tramcar. We after- 
wards found that the untrodden wilds of our virgin 
forest were traversed by a regular hourly service of 
tramcars ; alas for vanished illusions ! 

There is a street in Port-of- Spain which used to 
be known as the "Calle de los Presidentes," or Presi- 
dents' Street, for it was here that fugitive Presidents 
of Venezuela were wont to take refuge when the 
political atmosphere of that republic grew uncom- 
fortable for them. Most of these gentlemen thought- 
fully brought with them as much of the national till 
as they were able to lay their hands on, to comfort 
them in their exile. Spanish- American republics seem 
to produce Dictator-Presidents very freely. When I 
was in Venezuela in 1907 Cipriano Castro had grasped 
supreme power, and governed the country as an auto- 
crat. Castro, who was an uneducated half-caste, ruled 
by corruption and terror; he repudiated all the na- 
tional obligations, quarrelled with the United States 
and with every European Power, and disposed of his 
political opponents by the simple expedient of plac- 
ing them against a wall with a file of soldiers witH 
loaded rifles in front of them. For eight years this 
ignorant, bloodthirsty savage enjoyed absolute power, 
until he was forced in 1908 to flee to Europe. I do 
not know whether he followed the national custom by 
taking most of the exchequer with him. A typical 



230 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

sample of Castro's administrative powers was to be 
seen at La Guayra, the wretched, poverty-stricken 
seaport of Caracas. Dominating the squalid little 
place was a huge and imposing fort with heavy guns, 
over which the gaudy Venezuelan tricolour of yellow, 
blue, and red fluttered bravely. This fort was an 
elaborate sham, built of coloured plaster, and the 
guns were of painted wood only; but Castro thought 
that it was calculated to frighten the foreigner, and 
it possibly flattered the national vanity as well. 

A most remarkable example of a Dictator-Tyrant 
was Juan Rosas, who, for seventeen years, from 1835 
to 1852, ruled the Argentine Republic as an un- 
challenged despot. Rosas was born in 1793, and be- 
gan life as a gaucho. He seized supreme power in 
1835, and is credited with having put twenty-five thou- 
sand people to death. The "Nero of South America" 
was ably backed-up by his seconds-in-command, Oribe 
and Urquiza, two most consummate scoundrels. 
Whether Rosas "saw red," as others since his day 
have done, or whether it was the play on his own 
name which pleased him, I cannot say, but he had a 
perfect mania for the colour red. He dressed all his 
troops in scarlet ponchos, and ordered every male in- 
habitant of Buenos Ayres who wore a coat at all, to 
wear a scarlet waistcoat, whilst all ladies were bidden 
to wear a knot of scarlet ribbon and to carry a red 
fan. In the Dictator's own house at Palermo all 
the carpets and stuffs were scarlet. An elderly lady 
in Buenos Ayres, who remembered Rosas' dictator- 
ship perfectly, showed me some of the scarlet fans, 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 231 

specially made in Spain for the Argentine market 
after Rosas had promulgated his edict. My friend de- 
scribed to me how Rosas placed several of his rough 
police at the doors of every church, and any lady who 
did not exhibit the obligatory red bow on her black 
dress (in Spanish-speaking countries the women al- 
ways go to Mass in black) , received a dab of pitch on 
her cheek, on to which the policeman clapped a rosette 
of red paper. She told it all so graphically that I 
could almost see the stream of frightened, black-clad 
women issuing from the church, whilst their husbands 
and lovers stood expectantly below ( South American 
men rarely enter a church), every man- jack of them 
with a scarlet waistcoat, like a flock of swarthy robin 
redbreasts. I have seen some of these waistcoats; 
the young bloods wore scarlet silk, the older men red 
cloth. Rosas, like a mediaeval monarch, had his court 
fool or jester, a dwarf known as Don Eusebio. Rosas 
dressed him in scarlet and gave him the rank of a 
general, with a scarlet-clad bodyguard, and woe be- 
tide any one who treated the Dictator's fool with 
scant respect. Rosas was undoubtedly as mad as Bed- 
lam, but he was an abominably bloodthirsty madman 
who successfully exterminated all his opponents. The 
Dictator was accessible to every one at his house at 
Palermo, and the marvel is that he managed to escape 
assassination. His enormities became so intolerable 
that in 1852 the Brazilians and Uruguayans invaded 
the Argentine, and at the critical moment General 
Urquiza, Rosas' trusted second-in-command, be- 



232 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

trayed him and went over to the enemy, so the Die-' 
tator's power was broken. 

Rosas took refuge in the British Legation, and for 
some reason which I have never fathomed, he was 
shipped to England on H.M.S. Locust. He settled 
down at Swaythling near Southampton, where he 
died in 1877 after twenty-five years peaceful resi- 
dence. He was a peculiarly bloodthirsty scoundrel. 

Some of these Spanish-American dictators have 
been beneficent despots, such as Jose Francia, who, 
upon Paraguay proclaiming her independence in 
1811, got elected President, and soon afterwards man- 
aged to secure his nomination as Dictator for life. 
He ruled Paraguay autocratically but well until his 
death in 1840, and the country prospered under him. 
Under the iron rule of Porfirio Diaz, from 1877 to 
1911, Mexico enjoyed the only period of comparative 
calm that turbulent country has known in recent years, 
and made continued economic progress. 

I think that a Latin- American's only abstract idea 
of government is a despotic one. They do not trouble 
much about the substance as long as they have the 
shadow, and provided that the national arms display 
prominently a "Cap of Liberty," and mottoes of 
"Libertad y Progreso" are sufficiently flaunted about, 
he does not bother much about the absence of such 
trifles as trial by jury, or worry his head over the 
venality and tyranny of officials, the "faking" of elec- 
tions, or the disregard of the President of the day 
for the constitutional limitations imposed upon his 
office. Do not the national arms and motto proclaim 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 233 

that his country stands in the van of Liberty and 
Progress, and what more could any one want? Some 
of the coats-of-arms of Spanish- American republics 
and states would give an official of the College of 
Arms an apoplectic fit, for "colour" is unblushingly 
displayed on "colour" and "metal" upon "metal" in 
defiance of every recognised rule of heraldry. 

The first time that I was in Buenos Ayres a very 
pleasant young English civil engineer begged me to 
visit the family with whom he was boarding, assuring 
me that I should find the most amusing nest of cranks 
there. These people had come originally from the 
Pacific Coast, I cannot recall whether from Bolivia 
or Ecuador. As their revolutionary tendencies and 
their constant efforts to overthrow the Government 
had rendered their native country too hot to hold them, 
they had drifted through Peru to Chili, and had 
wandered across the continent to Buenos Ayres, 
where the details connected with the running of a 
boarding-house had left them with but little time for 
putting their subversive tendencies into practice. 
Amongst their paying guests was an elderly man from 
the country of their origin, who twenty-five years 
earlier had so disapproved of the particular President 
elected to rule his native land, that he had shown his 
resentment by attempting to assassinate him. Being, 
however, but an indifferent shot with a revolver, he 
had merely wounded the President in the arm. He 
had somehow managed to escape from Bolivia, or 
Ecuador, and ultimately made his way to Buenos 
Ayres, where he was warmly welcomed in revolution- 



234 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

ary circles; and his defective marksmanship being 
overlooked, the will was taken for the deed, and he 
was always alluded to as "El Libertador," or "The 
Liberator." I accompanied the young engineer to 
his boarding-house one evening, where I met the most 
extraordinary collection of people. Every one was 
talking at once, and all of them at the very top of 
their voices, so it was impossible to follow what was 
being said, but I have no doubt that their opinions 
were all sufficiently "enlightened" and "advanced." 
"The Liberator" sat apart in an arm-chair, his pa- 
triarchal white beard streaming over his chest, and 
was treated with immense deference by every one 
present. At intervals during the evening glasses of 
Guinness' bottled stout were offered to the Liberator 
(and to no one else), this being a beverage of which 
most South Americans are inordinately fond. I was 
duly introduced to the Liberator, who received my 
advances with affability tempered with haughtiness. 
I flattered myself that I had made a very favourable 
impression on him, but I learnt afterwards that the 
old gentleman was deeply offended with me, for, on 
being introduced to him, I had assured him that it 
was a pleasure to meet "so distinguished a mW (un 
hombre tan distinguido), whereas I should have said 
"so distinguished a gentleman'' 9 (un caballero tan dis- 
tinguido) , a curious point for so ardent a democrat to 
boggle over. 

No stranger in Buenos Ayres should omit a visit 
to the Plaza Euskara on a Sunday. 

The Plaza Euskara is the great court where the 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 235 

Basques play their national game of "pelota." 
Euskara is the term used by the Basques themselves 
for their mysterious language, a language with no 
affinity to any European tongue, and so difficult that 
it is popularly supposed that the Devil, after spend- 
ing seven fruitless years in endeavouring to master it, 
gave up the attempt in despair. "Pelota" is the father 
of racquets and fives, and is an immemorially old 
game, going back, it is said, to the times of the Ro- 
mans. Instead of using a racquet, it is played with a 
curved wicker basket strapped on to the right wrist. 
This basket is not unlike in shape to those wicker-work 
covers which in pre-taxi days were placed by London 
hotel porters over the wheels of hansom-cabs to pro- 
tect ladies' dresses in getting in or out of them. When 
a back-handed stroke is necessary, the player grasps 
his right wrist with his left hand, using his wicker- 
encased right hand as a racquet. The court is nearly 
three times the length of a racquet-court, and is al- 
ways open to the air. There is a back wall and a 
wall on the left-hand side ; the other two sides are open 
and filled with spectators. The players are marvel- 
lously adroit, and get up balls which seem quite im- 
possible to return; they are all professionals, for the 
game is so difficult that it must be learnt in early 
boyhood. It is scored like racquets up to fifteen points, 
one side invariably wearing blue "berets" and sashes, 
the other red. Large red and blue dials mark the 
points on the end wall as they are scored. 

On Sundays and holidays the Plaza Euskara is a 
wonderful sight, with its thousands of spectators, all 



236 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

worked up to a pitch of intense excitement. The 
betting is tremendous, and fat wads of dollar bills 
are produced from the shabbiest of coats, whose own- 
ers one would hardly associate with such an amount 
of portable wealth. The three umpires sit together 
on a sort of rostrum, each one crowned with the na- 
tional Basque "beret." Points are being continually 
referred to their decision, amidst the shouts and yells 
of the excited partisans. Every time the three um- 
pires stand up, remove their berets, and make low 
bows to each other; they then confer in whispers, and 
having reached a decision, they again stand up bare- 
headed, repeat their bows, and then announce their 
verdict to the public. Pelota is certainly a most in- 
teresting game to watch, owing to the uncanny skill of 
the players. Invariably in the course of the afternoon 
there is one match in which the little apprentices take 
part, either with their masters as partners, or en- 
tirely amongst themselves. 
f I have used the Spanish word "pelota," but it 
merely means "ball," just as the Russian word 
"soviet" means nothing in the world but "council." 
English people who refuse to take the trouble to learn 
any foreign language, seem to love using these words ; 
they have all the glamour of the unfamiliar and un- 
known about them. Personally, it always seemed to 
me very foolish using the term "Kaiser" to describe 
the ex-Emperor William. Certainly any dictionary 
will tell one that Kaiser is the German equivalent for 
Emperor, but as we happen to speak English I fail 
to see why we should use the German term. Equally, 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 237 

Konig is the German for King, and yet I never recol- 
lect any one alluding to the Konig of Saxony. Some 
people seem to imagine that the title "Kaiser" was 
/ a personal attribute of William of Hohenzollern ; it 
was nothing of the sort. Should any one have been 
entitled to the term, it would have been the Hapsburg 
Emperor, the lineal descendant of the "Heiliger 
Rbmischer Kaiser," and yet one used to read such 
ridiculous headings as "Kaiser meets Austrian Em- 
peror." What did the writers of this imagine that 
Franz- Josef was called by his subjects? The mean- 
ingless practice only originated in England with Wil- 
liam II. 's accession; it was unheard of before. If 
English people had any idea that "Rey" was the Span- 
ish for King, I am sure that on King Alfonso's next 
visit to England we should see flaring headlines an- 
nouncing the "Arrival of the Rey in London," and 
in the extraordinarily unlikely event of the Queen of 
Sweden ever wishing to pay a visit to this country, any 
one with a Swedish dictionary could really compose a 
brilliant headline, "The Drottning drives despond- 
ently down Downing Street," and I confess that 
neither of them seem one whit more foolish than for 
English-speaking people to use the term Kaiser. The 
label may be a convenient one, but it is inaccurate, 
for there was not one Kaiser but two. 

The familiar, when wrapped in all the majesty of 
a foreign tongue, can be very imposing. Some little 
time back a brother of mine laid out a new rock- 
garden at his house in the country. The next year 
a neighbour wrote saying that he would be very grate- 



238 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

ful should my brother be able to supply him with any 
of his superfluous rock-plants. My brother answered, 
regretting his inability to accede to this request, as, 
owing to the dry spring, his rock-garden had failed 
absolutely, in fact the only growth visible in it con- 
sisted of several hundred specimens of the showy yel- 
low blooms of the "Leo Elegans." Much impressed 
with this sonorous appellation, his correspondent 
begged for a few roots of "Leo Elegans." My 
brother, in his reply, pointed out that the common 
dandelion was hardly a sufficient rarity to warrant 
its being transplanted. 

I went out a second time to the Argentine Republic 
with Patrick Lyon, to whom I have already alluded, 
in order to place a young relative of his as premium- 
pupil on an English-owned ranche, or estancia, as it 
is locally called. We had an extremely unpleasant 
voyage out, for at Rio Janeiro we were unfortunate 
enough to get yellow fever into the ship, and we had 
five deaths on board. I myself was attacked by the 
fever, but in its very mildest form, and I was the 
only one to recover ; all the other victims of the yellow 
scourge died, and I attribute my own escape to the 
heroic remedy administered to me with my own con- 
sent by the ship's doctor. Although Buenos Ayres is 
quite out of the yellow-fever zone, the disease has 
occasionally been brought there from Brazil, and to 
Argentines the words "yellow fever" are words of 
terror, for in the early "seventies" the population of 
Buenos Ayres was more than decimated by a fearful 
epidemic of the scourge. Our ship was at once 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 239 

ordered back to Brazil, and was not allowed to dis- 
charge one single ounce of her cargo, which must 
have entailed a very heavy financial loss on the R. M. t 
S. P. Company. We unfortunate passengers had to 
undergo twenty-one days rigorous quarantine, during 
which we were allowed no communication whatever 
with the outside world, and were in addition mulcted 
of the exorbitant sum of £3 a day for very indifferent 
board and accommodation. 

Having reached the estancia and placed our pupil 
on it, we liked the place so well that we made ar- 
rangements to stay there for six weeks at least, thus 
getting a very good idea of its daily life. The province 
of Buenos Ayres is one great featureless, treeless, 
dead-flat plain, and being all an alluvial deposit, it 
contains neither a pebble in the soil nor a single spring 
of water. Water is found everywhere at a depth 
of six or seven feet, and this great level extends for 
a thousand miles. Where its undoubted fascination 
comes in is hard to say, yet I defy any one not to re- 
spond to it. It is probably due to the sense of limit- 
less space, and to a feeling of immense freedom, the 
latter being physical and not political. The only in- 
digenous tree is the ombu, and the ombu makes itself 
conspicuous by its rarity. Nature must have fash- 
ioned this tree with her tongue in her cheek, for the 
wood is a mere pith, and a walking-stick can be driven 
right into the tree. Not only is the wood useless as 
timber, but it is equally valueless as fuel, for the 
pith rots before it can be dried. The leaves are poison- 
ous, and in spite of its being mere pith, it is one of 



240 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

the slowest-growing trees known, so that, take it all 
round, the solitary indigenous tree of Buenos Ayres 
is about the most useless arboreal product that could 
be imagined. The ombu is a handsome tree to the 
eye, not unlike an English walnut in its habit of 
growth, and it has the one merit of being a splendid 
shade-tree. During the last forty years^ poplars, 
willows and eucalyptus have been lavishly planted 
round the estancia houses, so any green or dusky 
patch of trees breaking the bare expanse of dun- 
coloured plain is an unfailing sign of human habita- 
tion. 

The manager and the premium-pupils on our es- 
tancia all breakfasted before six, and then went out 
to the horse-corral to catch their horses for the day's 
work. They were obliging enough to catch horses, 
tod, for myself and Lyon, which we duly found tied up 
to a tree when we made our later appearance. Let 
us suppose an order for fifty bullocks to have come 
from Buenos Ayres. The manager with the three 
pupils and some ten mounted gauchos would ride off 
to the selected enclosure, and run his eye over the 
"mob" of cattle. Having selected six beasts, he would 
point them out to the gauchos, and then pick out two 
for himself and his younger brother. Shaking his 
reins, and calling out "Ico! Ico!" to his horse, he 
would ride up to the doomed beast, and endeavour 
to cut him out from the herd. The horse, who under- 
stood and enjoyed the game as well as the man on his 
back, once he had distinguished the bullock they were 
riding down, needed no stimulant of whip, but would 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 241 

follow him of his own accord, twisting and doubling 
like a retriever after a wounded hare, or a terrier 
after a rat. Once the animal was cut out of the herd, 
the manager would uncoil his lasso, one end of which 
was made fast to the cinch-ring of his girths, and out 
flew the looped coil of rope with unerring straightness, 
catching the bullock round the horns. The intelli- 
gent horse, having played the game many times be- 
fore, steadied himself for the shock which experience 
had taught him to expect when he would feel the 
whole weight of the galloping bullock suddenly ar- 
rested in his rush for freedom tugging at his cinch- 
ring. The gauchos had also secured their beasts in 
the same way, and the process was continued until the 
fifty bullocks had been securely corralled, blissfully 
unconscious that this was the first stage of their ulti- 
mate transformation into roast beef, or filets de boeuf 
a la Bordelaise. Though Lyon and I never attempted 
to use the lasso, we often joined in riding a beast 
down, and the horses, after they had once identified 
the particular beast they were to follow, turned and 
twisted with such unexpected suddenness that they 
nearly shot us both out of the saddle a dozen times. 
None of the pupils were yet able to use the lasso with 
certainty, though they spent hours in practising at 
a row of bullocks' skulls in the corral. In time a 
foreigner can learn to throw the lasso with all the skill 
of a born Argentine, but the use of the "bolas" is an 
art that must be acquired in childhood. I used to see 
some of the gauchos' children, little fellows of five or 
six, practising on the fowls with miniature toy bolas 



242 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

made of string, and they usually hit their mark. The 
bolas consist of pieces of raw hide shaped like the 
letter Y ; at the extremities are two heavy lead balls, 
whilst at the base of the Y is a wooden ball which is 
held in the hand. The operator whirls the bolas round 
his head, and sends them flying at the objective with 
unfailing certainty, and the animal "emboladoed" 
drops as though shot through the head. I have seen 
these used on "outside camps," but on a well-managed 
estancia, such as Espartillar, the use of the bolas is 
strictly prohibited, since it tends to break the animal's 
leg. The only time I ever saw them employed there, 
was against a peculiarly aggressive male ostrich, who 
attacked all intruders into his particular domain with 
the utmost ferocity. The bird fell like a dead thing, 
and he assumed a very chastened demeanour after 
this lesson. The South American ostrich, the Rhea, 
though smaller and less dangerous than his big 
African cousin, can be most pugnacious when he is 
rearing a family of young chicks. I advisedly say 
"he," for the hen ostrich, once she has hatched her 
eggs, considers all her domestic obligations fulfilled, 
and disappears to have a good gossip with her lady 
friends, leaving to her husband the task of attending 
to the young brood. The male bird is really danger- 
ous at this time, for his forward kick is terrifically 
powerful. The ostrich can run faster than any horse, 
but it is quite easy to circumvent any charging bird. 
All that is necessary is to turn one's horse quickly at 
right angles; the ostrich has such way on him that 
he is unable to pull up, and goes tearing on a hundred 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 243 

yards beyond his objective before he can change his 
direction. This manoeuvre repeated two or three 
times leaves the bird discomfited; as they would say 
in Ireland, "You have him beat." I confess that I 
have never seen an ostrich bury his head in the sand 
to blind himself to any impending danger, as he is 
traditionally supposed to do; I fancy that this is a 
libel on a fairly sagacious bird, and that in reality 
the practice is entirely confined to politicians. 

The Argentine Republic is peculiar in possessing 
! a venomous toad, equipped like a snake with regular 
poison-glands and fangs. He is known in the ver- 
nacular as escuerzo, and is rather a handsome creature, 
wearing a green black-striped coat. I am told by 
learned people that he is not a true toad, that his 
proper name is Ceratophrys ornata, and that he is a 
cannibal, feeding on harmless frogs and toads which 
he kills with his poison-fangs. There was a plenti- 
ful supply of these creatures at Espartillar, and the 
pupils, when they found an escuerzo, loved to tease 
him with a stick. He is probably the worse-tempered 
and most irritable batrachian known, and when 
prodded with a stick would puff himself out, and work 
himself into a hideous passion. Every one went about 
high-booted, and possibly his fangs were not powerful 
enough to penetrate a boot, but, anyhow, he never 
made the attempt; he tried to snap at the hands in- 
stead, and as he could only jump up a foot or so, he 
continued making a series of abortive little leaps, 
each futile attempt at reaching his aggressor's hands 
adding to the creature's insane rage. When the 



244 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

escuerzo was beside himself with fury, the pupil would 
dip his stick into the oily residue of his pipe, and hold 
it out to the toad, who would fasten on to it like 
a mad creature, only to die in a few seconds of the 
nicotine. 

The only other venomous reptile was the Vibora 
de la Cruz, the "Viper with the Cross," much dreaded 
by the gauchos. 

It is an interesting sight seeing wild young horses 
being broken-in, and receiving their first instruction 
in the service of man. The rough-rider at Espartillar 
was a younger brother of the manager's, a short, 
sturdy, round-faced, grinning Cornish lad of eighteen, 
a youth of large appetite, but of few words, uni- 
versally known as "The Joven," which merely means 
"the lad." "Joven," by the way, is pronounced 
"Hoven," with a slight guttural sound before the 
"H." The Joven, having met with no serious acci- 
dents during the two years he had officiated as rough- 
rider, had kept his nerve, and was still young enough 
to enjoy his hazardous duties most thoroughly. 

He always had a large gallery of spectators, for 
every one on the estancia who could manage it trooped 
to the corral to criticise and to pass judgment. The 
sun-browned Joven, who preferred riding without 
stirrups, would appear, stripped to his drawers and 
vest, shod with canvas alpargates, with a revenque, 
or short raw-hide whip, in his hand. A young horse, 
who had hitherto run wild, would be let in and las- 
soed, with a second lasso thrown over his hind legs. 
Before tightening the lassoes the men threw a recado, 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 245 

or soft leather saddle on him, the Joven tugging at the 
'string-girths until the unfortunate grass-fed animal 
looked like a wasp. The lassoes were tautened, and 
the youngster thrown over on his side. The Joven, 
grinning cheerfully, then forced a thong of raw hide 
into his unwilling pupil's mouth, whilst the young 
horse, half -mad with terror, rolled his eyes impo- 
tently. The Joven, standing astride over the fallen 
animal, half -dancing on his toes in his canvas shoes, 
would shout to the men to slacken the heel-rope, and 
then to let go the head-rope. As the terrified animal 
struggled to his feet, the Joven slipped nimbly on to 
the recado. Then came a brief pause, as the horse 
puzzled over the unaccustomed weight on his back, 
and those abominable girths that were cutting him in 
two, till, with his head between his knees, and his back 
arched like a bow, up he went vertically into the air, 
landing on all four feet. That irksome weight was 
still there, and he had received a sharp cut with some 
unknown instrument, but it might be worth while 
trying it again. So up he went a second time, the 
Joven grinning from ear to ear, but sitting like a 
rock, then, as it was as well to teach a young horse 
that bucking entailed punishment, the revenque de- 
scended smartly two or three times, and a revenque 
hurts. The puzzled youngster did not like it, and 
thought that he would try rolling for a change. The 
Joven slipped off with the dexterity of an acrobat, 
and dancing about on his toes, chose his moment, and 
was again on the horse's back as he rose. Then came 
a real contest and trial of skill between the four-legged 



246 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

and two-legged youngsters, as the horse began kick- 
ing furiously, and then reared, but do what he would 
that tiresome weight was still on his back, and there 
was an unaccustomed pressure on his sides. The 
Joven, his sun-baked round face wreathed in grins, 
as though he were having the time of his life, was now 
using his revenque in earnest, and the young horse 
decided that he would prefer to try a gallop at full 
speed. Off he went like an arrow from a bow, the 
Joven dexterously guiding him through the entrance 
to the corral, partly with the thong of raw hide, in part 
with light strokes of the revenque on the side of the 
head, and they disappeared in a dense cloud of dust 
over the limitless "camp." A quarter of an hour 
later they reappeared, the horse cantering quietly, 
and the boy, still grinning like a Cheshire cat, sitting 
quite loosely, with his legs dangling, as though he were 
in an arm-chair. The Joven slid to the ground, and 
commenced talking to the horse in Spanish, as he 
stroked his head. "Pingo! PingoT he cried, as he 
stroked him, the word Pingo being supposed in the 
Argentine, for some unknown reason, to exercise a 
magically soothing influence over a horse, and then, 
removing the raw-hide thong from the youngster's 
mouth, he unsaddled him and turned him loose with 
a resounding smack on his quarters, leaving him to 
meditate on the awful things that may befall a young 
horse when he attempts to misbehave. The light- 
hearted Joven, dripping with perspiration, wiped the 
sweat from his eyes, and, with unabated cheerfulness, 
took stock of the second animal he was to school, for 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 247 

he was to give three lessons that morning. When 
they were over, the youth's own mother would not 
have known him, so caked with dust and perspiration 
was he. He made his way to the swimming-bath, still 
cheerful and smiling, determined not to miss the mid- 
day meal by one second, for, like all the heroines of 
Mr. E. F. Benson's novels, the eighteen-year-old 
Joven was afflicted with a perpetual voracious hunger. 
When I complimented him at dinner on his very skil- 
ful performance, the Joven, being in a loquacious 
mood, said, after a pause for thought, "Oh, yes," 
beamed with friendliness, and promptly devoured an- 
other plateful of beef. I asked him whether he never 
regretted the quiet of his father's Cornish farm, in 
view of the strenuous exertions his duties as rough- 
rider at Espartillar imposed on him. The Joven 
knocked out his pipe, lit another, thought for five min- 
utes, and then said, "No, it's fun," displaying every 
tooth in his head as he did so as a proof that his con- 
versational brevity was due not to a surly disposition, 
but to the limitations of his vocabulary. 

The pupils at Espartillar were exceedingly well 
treated. The house was most comfortably furnished, 
and contained a full-sized English billiard-table, two 
pianos, a plentiful supply of books, and a barrel- 
organ, for this was many years before the birth of the 
gramophone. It is the singular custom on most es- 
tancias to kill beef for six months of the year, and 
mutton for the remaining six, which entails a certain 
monotony of diet. We had fallen in for the beef- 
eating half-year, but the French wife of the English 



248 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

estancia-carpenter officiated as cook, and she had all 
the culinary genius of her countrywomen. Above all 
she avoided those twin abominations "Ajo" and "Aji," 
or garlic and green chilli, which Argentines cram 
into every dish, thus making them hideously unpalat- 
able to Northern Europeans. 

In an absolutely treeless land, without any coal 
measures, fuel is one of the greatest difficulties of 
camp life. In my time, in the city of Buenos Ayres, 
all the coal came from England, and cost, delivered, 
£5 a ton. Its cost in the country, hauled for perhaps 
twenty miles over the roadless camp, would be prohib- 
itive, and there was no wood to be had. For this rea- 
son, on every estancia there were some ten acres 
planted with peach trees. It seems horribly wasteful 
to cut down peach trees for fuel, but they grow very 
rapidly, burn admirably, and whilst they are stand- 
ing the owner gets an unlimited supply of peaches for 
pickling and preserving. The soil of the Argentine 
suits peaches, and both sorts, the pink-fleshed Euro- 
pean "free-stone" and the American yellow-fleshed 
"cling-stone," do splendidly. In Spanish, the former 
are called melocotones, the latter duraznos. At Es- 
partillar there were quite twenty acres of peach trees, 
and when Lyon and I wished to be of use, the manager 
frequently asked us to hitch-up the wagon, and bring 
him in a few sackfuls of peaches for preserving. 

Espartillar boasted a great neglected wilderness of 
a garden, as untidy and unkempt as a fashionable 
pianist's hair, but growing the most wonderful collec- 
tion of fruit. Here pears, peaches, lemons, guavas, 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 249 

and strawberries flourished equally well in the accom- 
modating Argentine climate, and the pears of South 
America, the famous peras de agwa, must be tasted 
before their excellence can be imagined. The garden 
was traversed by an avenue of fine eucalyptus trees, 
amongst whose dusky foliage little screaming green 
parrakeets darted in and out all day long, like flashes 
of vivid emerald light. The garden was also, unfor- 
tunately, the favourite recreation-ground of a family 
of lively skunks, and the skunk is an animal whose 
terrific offensive powers necessitate extreme caution 
in approaching him. Should a young dog unwarily 
attempt to tackle a skunk, he had to be rigorously 
quarantined for a fortnight, for otherwise the inex- 
pressibly sickening odour was unendurable. 

Beyond the garden enclosure, the dun-coloured 
expanse of treeless featureless camp stretched its end- 
less flat levels to the horizon, the wooden posts sup- 
porting the wire fences being the only sign that man 
had ever invaded these vast solitudes. Our minds are 
so constituted that we set bounds to everything, for 
everything to which we are accustomed has limits; 
one had a perpetual feeling that were one only to ride 
over the camp long enough, towns and human habita- 
tions must be reached somewhere. A glance at the 
map showed that this was not so. Due south one 
could have ridden hundreds of miles with no variations 
whatever to mark the distances achieved. This end- 
less camp had apparently no beginning and no end; 
it was as though one had suddenly come face to face 
with Eternity. 



250 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

All my experiences, however, are thirty years old. 
I believe that now, within a radius of fifty miles from 
Buenos Ayres, most of the camp has been broken up 
and ploughed. Growing wheat now covers the vast 
khaki-coloured plains I recollect dotted with roving 
herds of cattle. The picturesque and half-savage 
Gaucho, who lived entirely on meat, and would have 
scorned to have walked even a hundred yards on foot, 
has been replaced by the Italian agricultural labourer, 
who lives on polenta and macaroni, and will cheerfully 
trudge any distance to his work. The great solitudes 
have gone, for with tillage there must be roads now, 
and villages, and together with the solitudes the won- 
derful teeming bird-life must have vanished, too. 

I prefer to recollect the Espartillar I knew, a place 
of unending spaces and glorious sunshine, with air 
almost as intoxicating as wine, where innumerable 
spurred plovers screamed raucously all day long, 
where the little ground-owls blinked unceasingly at 
the edge of their burrows ; where bronze-green ibises 
flashed through the sunlight, and rose-coloured spoon- 
bills trailed in pink streaks across the blue sky, as 
they flew in single file from one laguna to another. 
That marvellous bird-life was worth travelling seven 
thousand miles to see; wheatfields can be seen any- 
where. 



CHAPTER IX 

Difficulties of an Argentine railway engineer — Why Argentina 
has the Irish gauge — A sudden contrast — A more violent 
contrast — Names and their obligations — Capetown — The 
thoroughness of the Dutch pioneers — A dry and thirsty land 
— The beautiful Dutch Colonial houses — The Huguenot 
refugees — The Rhodes Fruit Farms — Surf-riding — Groote 
Schuur — General Botha — The Rhodes Memorial — The 
episode of the Sick Boy — A visit from Father Neptune — 
What pluck will do. 

A railway engineer in the Argentine Republic is 
confronted with peculiar difficulties. In the first 
place, in a treeless country there is obviously no wood 
for sleepers. A thousand miles up the giant Parana 
there are vast tracts of forest, but either the wood is 
unsuited for railway-sleepers, or the means of trans- 
port are lacking, so the engineer is forced to use iron 
pot-sleepers for supporting his rails. These again re- 
quire abundant ballast, and there is no ballast in a 
country devoid of stone and with a soil innocent of the 
smallest pebble. The engineer can only use burnt 
clay to ballast his road, and as a result the dust on 
an Argentine railway defies description. In my time, 
when carriages of the English type were in use, the 
atmosphere after an hour's run was as thick as a dense 
London November fog, and after five or six hours' 
travelling the passengers alighted with faces as black 
as niggers'. Whilst waiting for a train, its approach 
would be announced by a vast pillar of dust appearing 

251 



252 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

in the distance. This pillar of dust seemed almost to 
reach the sky, and any passengers of Hebraic origin 
must really have imagined themselves back in the 
Sinai peninsula, and must have wondered why the 
dusky pillar was approaching them instead of lead- 
ing them on. 

The difficulties connected with the working of rail- 
ways did not end here. Most people know that a 
swarm of locusts can stop a train, for the bodies of 
these pests are full of grease, and after the engine- 
wheels have crushed countless thousands of locusts, 
the wheels become so coated with oil that they merely 
revolve, and refuse to grip the rails. Let the driver 
open his sand-box never so widely, the wheels cannot 
bite, and so the train comes to a standstill. Oddly 
enough, a bird, too, causes a great deal of trouble. 
The "oven-bird" makes a large domed nest of clay, 
the size of a cocoa-nut. In that treeless land the 
oven-birds look on telegraph-posts as specially pro- 
vided by a benign Providence to afford them eligible 
nesting-sites, and from some perversity of instinct, 
or perhaps attracted by the gleam of the white earth- 
enware, they invariably select one of the porcelain in- 
sulators as the site of their future home, and pro- 
ceed to coat it laboriously with clay, thus effectually 
destroying the insulation. Now the working of a 
single-line is entirely dependent on the telegraph, and 
the oven-birds, with their misplaced zeal, were con- 
tinually interrupting telegraphic communication, so 
on the Great Southern Railway of Buenos Ayres 
every single telegraph-post was surmounted with a 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 253 

wooden box, mutely proclaiming itself the most desir- 
able building-site that heart of bird could wish for, 
and silently offering whatever equivalents to a gravel 
soil and a southern aspect could suggest themselves 
to the avian intelligence. In spite of this these mis- 
guided fowls retained their affection for the insulators, 
and the Great Southern had during the nesting sea- 
son to employ a gang of men to tear the nests down. 
Unlike the majority of railways, both in North and 
South America, which have adopted the 4 ft. 8% ins. 
gauge, the standard gauge of the Argentine Repub- 
lic is the Irish one of 5 ft. 3 ins., and the reason of 
this is rather singular. In 1855, during the Crimean 
War, a short railway was laid down from Balaclava 
to the British lines. The firm of contractors who built 
this railway for the British Government had con- 
structed some three years previously a small railway 
in Ireland, for which they had never been paid. They 
accordingly seized the engines and rolling-stock, 
which, owing to the difference in gauge, were useless 
in England. It occurred to the contractors that they 
might utilise this material by building the Crimean 
Railway to the Irish gauge of 5 ft. 3 ins., and they 
accordingly proceeded to do so. Two years after 
the Crimean War the same firm secured the contract 
for building the first railway in the Argentine, a short 
line, twenty-one miles long, from Buenos Ay res to 
the River Tigre. As they considered that their Cri- 
mean rolling-stock was still in good order, they ob- 
tained permission to build the Tigre Railway to the 
Irish gauge, and these much-travelled coaches and 



254 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

engines which had started their railway career in Ire- 
land, were shipped from the Crimea to the Plate, and 
eventually found themselves, to their vast surprise, 
rolling between Buenos Ayres and Tigre. The first 
time that I was in Buenos Ayres, in 1883, two of the 
original Crimean engines were still running on this 
little railway, the "Balaclava" and the "Eupatoria," 
the latter re-christened "Presidente Mitre." The 
newer railways followed the lead of the pioneer, and 
so it comes about that Ireland and the Argentine Re- 
public have the same standard gauge. 

The vast solitudes of Espartillar were within eight 
hours of Buenos Ayres, three by wagon and five by 
rail, so it was possible to wander out one night to 
the star-lit camp, where the silence was only broken 
by the screech of an occasional night-bird, or the beat 
of the wings of myriads of flighting ducks, without 
the slightest trace of man or his works perceptible in 
the great, grey, still, unpeopled world, and to be sit- 
ting the next night in evening clothes in a garish, 
over-gilt, over-decorated restaurant, humming with 
the clatter of plates and the chatter of high-pitched 
Argentine voices, as a noisy string-band played selec- 
tions from the latest Paris operette. It was difficult 
to realise that this ostentatiously modern town, with 
its meretricious glitter, and its population of pale- 
faced town-breds, was only a hundred miles from the 
place where, amongst brown, sunburnt folk, we had 
been living a primitive life tempered by quiet trans- 
planted English comfort. 

To me there is always something rather attractive 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 255 

in sudden contrasts in surroundings. My memory 
goes back forty years to Russia, when I was on a bear- 
shooting expedition with Sir Robert Kennedy. Ken- 
nedy had killed two bears, and we were making our 
way back to Petrograd that night, for next evening 
there was to be one of the famous "Bals des Palmiers" 
at the Winter Palace which we neither of us wished to 
miss. So it came about that one evening we were 
sitting in a two-roomed peasant's house, thigh-booted 
and flannel-shirted, in the roughest of clothes, de- 
vouring sustenance for our night's sledge journey 
out of pieces of newspaper by the light of a little 
smoky oil-lamp, whilst around us stood half the vil- 
lage, whispering endless comments, and gaping open- 
eyed on those mysterious strangers from the unknown 
world outside Russia. The room was lined with rough 
unpainted boards nailed over the log walls ; one quar- 
ter of it was occupied by a huge stove, on the top of 
which the children were sleeping; it was very dirty, 
and the heat in combination with the fetid atmos- 
phere was almost unendurable. A dimly lit picture, 
all in sombre browns, relieved by the scarlet shirts 
of the men, and the gaudy printed calicoes of the 
women, just visible in the uncertain light of the flick- 
ering lamp, and of the red glow from the stove. Then 
came an all-night drive in sjedges through the inter- 
minable forest of pines, the piercing cold lashing our 
faces like a whip, and the stars blazing in the great 
expanse of dull-polished steel above us with that 
hard diamond-like radiance they only assume when 
the thermometer is down below zero. 



256 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

Twenty-four hours later we were both in the vast 
halls of the Winter Palace in full uniform, as bediz- 
ened with gold as a nouveau riche's drawing-room. 
Though the world outside may have been frost-bound, 
Winter's domain stopped at the threshold of the Pal- 
ace, for once inside, banks of growing hyacinths and 
tulips bloomed bravely, and the big palms, from which 
the balls derived their name, stood aligned down the 
great halls, as though they were in their native South 
Sea Isles, with a supper-table for twelve persons ar- 
ranged under each of them. Those "Bals des Pal- 
miers" were really like a scene from the Arabian 
Nights, what with the varied uniforms of the men, 
the impressive Russian Court dresses of the women, 
the jewels, the lights, and the masses of flowers. The 
immense scale of everything in the Winter Palace 
added to the effect, and the innumerable rooms, some 
of them of gigantic size, rather gained in dignity by 
being sparsely tenanted, for only 1,500 people were 
asked to the "Palmiers." There was nothing like it 
anywhere else in Europe, and no one now living will 
ever look on so brilliant a scene, set in so vast a cadre. 
There was really a marked contrast between the two 
consecutive evenings Kennedy and I had spent to- 
gether. 

One of the ladies of the British Embassy in Pet- 
rograd inquired of a Court official what the cost of 
a "Bal des Palmiers'' amounted to. The chamberlain 
replied that for 1,500 people the cost would be about 
£9,000, working out at £6 per head. This included 
a special train all the way from Nice with growing 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 257 

and cut flowers, and another special train from the 
Crimea with fruit. A very expensive item was the 
carriage by road from Tsarskoe Selo of one hundred 
specially grown large palm trees in specially con- 
structed frost-proof vans; there was also the heavy 
cost of the supper and wine, which for the "Bals des 
Palmiers" was provided on a far more sumptuous 
scale than at the ordinary Court entertainments and 
balls. 

Ichabod ! Ichabod I 

Certain names carry their own responsibilities; for 
instance, when a town proudly proclaimed itself the 
"City of Good Airs" it should live up to its title. 
The Buenos Ayres of the early "eighties" was a no- 
toriously insanitary place without any system of 
proper drainage. Some of the "Good Airs" fairly 
knocked one down when one encountered them. That 
has all now been rectified; Buenos Ayres is at pres- 
ent admirably drained, and is one of the healthiest 
cities of South America. 

Certain names, again, have their drawbacks. Helen 
Lady Duff erin, the mother of my old Chief and god- 
father, was the grand-daughter of Richard Brinsley 
Sheridan, and in common with her two sisters, the 
Duchess of Somerset and Mrs. Norton, she had in- 
herited her full share of the Sheridan wit. As I have 
pointed out elsewhere, people of a certain class in 
London maintained in those days far closer relations 
with persons of a corresponding class in Paris than 
is the custom now. Lady Duff erin had innumerable 
friends in Paris, and amongst the oldest of these 



258 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

friends was Comte Joseph de Noailles. Whenever 
the Comte de Noailles came to London, Lady Duf- 
f erin was the first person he went to see. When they 
were both in their old age, the Comte de Noailles ar- 
rived in London, and, as usual, went to dine with his 
friend of many years. As it was a warm evening in 
July, he walked to Lady Dufferin's house from his 
hotel, carrying his overcoat on his arm. On leaving 
the house, the old gentleman forgot his cloak, and 
Lady Dufferin received a note the next morning ask- 
ing her to be good enough to send back the cloak by 
the bearer. The note was signed "Joseph de Noail- 
les." Lady Dufferin returned the cloak with this mes- 
sage, "Monsieur, lorsqu' on a le malheur de s'appeler 
Joseph, on ne laisse pas son manteau chez une dame." 
Joseph naturally suggests Egypt, and Egypt re- 
calls Africa, and on the whole African continent there 
is surely no more delectable spot than the Cape penin- 
sula. Capetown with its suburbs is dominated every- 
where by the gigantic flat-topped rock of Table Moun- 
tain. Go where you will amongst the most splendid 
woodland, coast and mountain scenery in the world, 
that ever-changing rampart of rock is still the cen- 
tral feature. Jan Van Riebeck, the original Dutch 
pioneer of 1652, must have yielded to the irresistible 
claims of Table Bay as a harbour with a very bad 
grace, before founding his new settlement on the 
slopes of Table Mountain. Every racial and inher- 
ited instinct in him must have positively itched to 
select in preference some nice low swampy site, for 
choice in the Cape Flats, if not actually below sea- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 2.59 

level, at all events at sea-level, where substantial brick 
dams could be erected against the encroaching waters, 
where he could construct an elaborate system of ca- 
nals, and where windmills would have to pump day 
and night to prevent the place becoming submerged. 
The Dutch, both in Java and in Demerara, had 
yielded to this misplaced affection for a sea-level site, 
and had constructed Batavia and Georgetown strictly 
according to their racial ideals, with a prodigal abund- 
ance of canals. Though this doubtless gave the set- 
tlers a home-like feeling, the canal-intersected town 
of Batavia is so unhealthy under a broiling tropical 
sun that it has been virtually abandoned as a place 
of residence. 

Capetown has none of the raw, unfinished aspect 
so many Colonial towns wear, but has a solid, grave 
dignity of its own, and its suburbs are unquestion- 
ably charming. The settled, permanent look of the 
town is perhaps due to the fact that there is not a 
single wooden house or fence in Capetown, every- 
thing is of substantial brick, stone and iron. The 
Dutch were admirable town-planners ; since the coun- 
try has been in British hands our national haphazard 
carelessness has asserted itself, and the city has been 
extended without any apparent design whatever. I 
was certainly not prepared for the magnificent groves 
of oaks which are such a feature of Capetown and its 
vicinity. These oaks, far larger than any to which 
we are accustomed, bear witness to the painstaking 
thoroughness of the Dutch. Before an oak capable 
of withstanding the arid climate and burning sun of 



260 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

South Africa could be produced, it had to be crossed 
and re-crossed many times. The existing stately tree 
is the fruit of this patient labour; it grows at twice 
the pace of our oaks, and attains far larger dimen- 
sions; it is quite useless as a timber tree, but pro- 
duces enormous acorns which, in windy weather, de- 
scend in showers from the trees and batter the cor- 
rugated iron roofs of the houses with a noise like an 
air-raid. 

The Union of South Africa is unfortunate in hav- 
ing the great range of the Drakensberg running 
parallel to the coastline for hundreds of miles, for 
until the Zambesi is reached there are practically no 
navigable rivers at all. This barrier mountain range, 
and the recklessness of the early settlers in cutting 
down the forests, are together responsible for the arid- 
ity of South Africa. She is, indeed, as Ezekiel said 
of old, "planted in the wilderness, in a dry and thirsty 
ground." The Cape peninsula is comparatively well- 
watered ; between the giant rocky buttresses of Table 
Mountain little clear streams gush down, and there 
are several brooks, proudly termed "rivers" locally, 
quite visible to the naked eye. Everything in this 
world is relative. I remember at Alkmaar in North 
Holland ascending an artificial mound perhaps sev- 
enty feet high, planted with trees. In the dead-flat 
expanse of the Low Countries, this hillock is looked 
on by the natives of Alkmaar much as Mont Blanc is 
regarded by the inhabitants of Geneva, with feelings 
of profound veneration ; so in South Africa the tiniest 
brooklet is the source of immense pride to the dwellers 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 261 

on its banks, and rightly so, for it is the very life- 
blood of the district, and literally Isaiah's "rivers of 
water in a dry place." I always carefully avoided any 
allusion to the sixteen different burns running through 
the park at Baron's Court, for it might have looked 
like arrogance to boast of this super-abundance of 
water in my old home, where, between ourselves, a 
wholly dry day was rather a notable rarity. Where 
the aridity is most noticeable is in the great oak and 
fir woods at Groote Schuur, the lordly pleasure-house 
which Cecil Rhodes built for himself at Rondebosch, 
under the slopes of the Devil's Peak. Here, under 
the trees, the ground is absolutely bare ; not even the 
faintest sign of grass, not the smallest scrap of vege- 
tation. Rondebosch Parish Church might have been 
lifted bodily from England ; it is an exceedingly hand- 
some building of a very familiar type, yet in the 
churchyard there was not one blade of green ; nothing 
but naked earth between the graves. Fortunately the 
Australian myrtle has been introduced, a shrub that 
can apparently dispense with moisture, so thanks to 
it every garden in the Capetown suburbs is sur- 
rounded by a hedge of vivid perennial green. These 
suburbs have a wonderfully home-like look, embow- 
ered as they are in oak trees, and the buildings are 
all of the solid familiar type; even the very railway 
stations, except for their nameboards, might be at 
Wandsworth Common, Balham, or Barnes, instead of 
at Rosebank, Rondebosch, and Claremont, though 
Balham and Barnes are not fortunate enough to have 
the purple ramparts of Table Mountain or the Devil's 



262 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

Peak towering over them, whilst, on the other hand, 
they fortunately escape the all-pervading South Afri- 
can dust. 

I like the name "The Tavern of the Ocean," for- 
merly given to Capetown ; and what a welcome break 
it must have afforded in the wearisome voyage from 
Europe to the Dutch East Indies, or to India proper! 
The Netherlands Dutch seem only to have regarded 
it as a half-way house, a sort of unimportant railway 
"halt" between Europe and the East, where the nec- 
essary fresh water and green vegetables could be sup- 
plied to passing vessels. It was not until Simon Van 
der Stel was appointed Governor in 1678 that any 
idea of developing the Cape as a colony was ever en- 
tertained. Van der Stel has left his impress deep 
on the country. Though the vine had been already 
introduced by Van Riebeck, it is to Van der Stel that 
the special features of Cape scenery are due, for we 
owe to him the splendid groves of oak of to-day, and 
he originated the Dutch Colonial type of building, 
of which so many fine specimens still remain. These 
old Dutch houses are a constant puzzle to me. In 
most new countries the original white settlers content 
themselves with the most primitive kind of dwelling, 
for where there is so much work to be done the orna- 
mental yields place to the necessary; but here, at the 
very extremity of the African continent, the Dutch 
pioneers created for themselves elaborate houses with 
admirable architectural details, houses recalling in 
some ways the chateaux of the Low Countries. 
Where did they get the architects to design these 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 263 

buildings? Where did they find the trained craftsmen 
to execute the architects' designs? Why did the set- 
tlers, struggling with the difficulties of an untamed 
wilderness, require such large and ornate dwellings? 
I have never heard any satisfactory answers to these 
questions. Groot Constantia, originally the home of 
Simon Van der Stel, now the government wine-farm, 
and Morgenster, the home of Mrs. Van der Byl, would 
be beautiful buildings anywhere, but considering that 
they were both erected in the seventeenth century, in 
a land just emerging from barbarism seven thousand 
miles away from Europe, a land, too, where trained 
workmen must have been impossible to find, the very 
fact of their ever having come into existence at all 
leaves me in bewilderment. 

These Colonial houses, most admirably adapted to 
a warm climate, correspond to nothing in Holland, or 
even in Java. They are nearly all built in the shape 
of an H, either standing upright or lying on its side, 
the connecting bar of the H being occupied by the 
dining-room. They all stand on stoeps or raised ter- 
races; they are always one-storied and thatched, and 
owe much of their effect to their gables, their many- 
paned, teak-framed windows, and their solid teak out- 
side shutters. Their white-washed, gabled fronts are 
ornamented with pilasters and decorative plaster- 
work, and these dignified, perfectly proportioned 
buildings seem in absolute harmony with their sur- 
roundings. Still I cannot understand how they got 
erected, or why the original Dutch pioneers chose 
to house themselves in such lordly fashion. At Groot 



264 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

Constantia, which still retains its original furniture, 
the rooms are paved with black and white marble, and 
contain a wealth of great cabinets of the familiar 
Dutch type, of ebony mounted with silver, of stink- 
wood and brass, of oak and steel; one might be gaz- 
ing at a Dutch interior by Jan Van de Meer, or by 
Peter de Hoogh, instead of at a room looking on to 
the Indian Ocean, and only eight miles distant from 
the Cape of Good Hope. How did these elaborate 
works of art come there? The local legend is that 
they were copied by slave labour from imported 
Dutch models, but I cannot believe that untrained 
Hottentots can ever have developed the craftsman- 
ship and skill necessary to produce these fine pieces 
of furniture. I think it far more likely to be due to 
the influx of French Huguenot refugees in 1689, the 
Edict of Nantes having been revoked in 1685, the 
same year in which Simon Van der Stel began to 
build Groot Constantia. Wherever these French 
Huguenots settled they brought civilisation in their 
train, and proved a blessing to the country of their 
adoption. In England they taught us silk-weaving 
and clock-making, starting the one in Spitalfields, the 
other in Clerkenwell. In Dublin, where a strong 
colony of them settled, they introduced the making 
of tabinet, or "Irish poplin," and I am told that the 
much-sought-after "Irish" silver was almost entirely 
the work of French Huguenot refugees. Here, at 
the far-off Cape, the Huguenots settled in the valleys 
of the Drakenstein, of the Hottentot's Holland, and 
at French Hoek; and they made the wilderness bios- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 265 

som, and transformed its barren spaces into smiling 
wheatfields and oak-shaded vineyards. They inci- 
dentally introduced the dialect of Dutch known as 
"The Taal," for when the speaking of Dutch was 
made compulsory for them, they evolved a simplified 
form of the language more adapted to their French 
tongues. I suspect, too, that the artistic impulse 
which produced the dignified Colonial houses, and 
built so beautiful a town as Stellenbosch (a name 
with most painful associations for many military offi- 
cers whose memories go back twenty years) must have 
come from the French. Stellenbosch, with its two- 
hundred-year-old houses, their fronts rich with elabo- 
rate plaster scroll-work, all its streets shaded with 
avenues of giant oaks and watered by two clear 
streams, is such an inexplicable town to find in a new 
country, for it might have hundreds of years of tra- 
dition behind it! Wherever they may have got it 
from, the artistic instinct of the old Cape Dutch is 
undeniable, for a hundred years after Van der Stel's 
time they imported the French architect Thibault 
and the Dutch sculptor Anton Anreith. To Anreith 
is due the splendid sculptured pediment over the Con- 
stantia wine-house illustrating the story of Gany- 
mede, and all Thibault' s buildings have great distinc- 
tion; but still, being where they are, they are a per- 
petual surprise, for in a new country one does not 
expect such a high level of artistic achievement. 

Many of the fine old Colonial homesteads are 
grouped together in what are now the Rhodes Fruit 
Farms in the Drakenstein. So attractive are they 



266 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

that I do not wonder that a very near relative of 
mine has bought one of them for his son; and I envy 
my great-nephew who will one day sit under the 
shadow of his own vines and fig trees at Lormarins, 
amongst groves of peaches, apricots and plums. I 
cherish pleasant recollections of a visit to Boschen- 
daal, also in the Fruit Farm district, a delightful old 
house, standing over a jungle of a garden where a 
brook babbles through thickets of orange and lemon 
trees, and amongst great tangles of bougainvillaea and 
pink oleanders, and in whose shady dining-hall I was 
hospitably entertained by a Dutch farmer on an ome- 
lette of ostrich's egg (one egg is enough for six peo- 
ple), on "most-bolajie" (bread made with sweet new 
wine instead of with water) , and other local delicacies, 
including "mabos," or alternate slices of dry salted 
peaches and dry sweetened apricots. This condiment 
is cynically known as married life. In the voorhuis 
of Boschendaal lay nineteen fine leopard skins, and 
Mr. Louw, the courtly mannered old farmer, who 
would be described by his countrymen as an "oprech- 
ter Burger," explained to me in slow and laborious 
English that he had killed every one of these leopards 
with his own hand within one mile of his own house. 

A most attractive land were it not for the aridity. 
Should I settle there I should be forever regretfully 
recalling the lush greenery of English meadows in 
June, or of English woods in spring-time. 

Just conceive of Van der Stel's astonishment when 
he first reached the Cape! He must have been used 
to a small, dead-flat, water-logged land, with odorif- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 267 

erous canals at every turn, and thousands of wind- 
mills pumping day and night for all they were worth 
to keep the country afloat at all; after a voyage of 
seven thousand miles he found himself in a land of 
mighty mountain ranges, of vast, illimitable distances, 
parched by a fierce sun, and nearly waterless. It must 
have needed immense courage to start the founding 
of a New Holland in such (to him) uncongenial sur- 
roundings. As a tribute to the adaptable South Afri- 
can climate, I may say that I have myself seen, on 
Sir Thomas Smartt's well-watered farm, apple trees 
and orange trees fruiting and ripening in the same 
field. 

When I was invited to go surf -bathing at Muizen- 
berg, I rubbed my eyes, for I had vague ideas that 
this pastime was confined to South Sea Islanders. 
Recollections of Ballantyne's books crowded in on 
me ; of apparently harmless sandal-wood traders, who 
unblushingly doubled the part of bloodthirsty pirates 
with their peaceful avocations; of bevies of swarthy 
but merry maidens rolling in on their planks on the 
top of vast surges ; of possibly some hideous banquet 
of taro roots and "long pig" (baked over hot stones 
under a cover of plantain leaves) to follow on these 
primitive pastimes; even perhaps of some coloured 
captive maiden, wreathed in hibiscus flowers, loudly 
proclaiming her distaste at the idea of being compul- 
sorily converted into "long pig." I should, of course, 
have had to rescue her after exhibiting prodigies of 
valour, to find this dumb but devoted damsel clinging 
to me like a leech, remaining a most embarrassing ap- 



268 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

pendage until she had learned sufficient English to 
answer "I will," when I could have united her to a 
suitable mate, a copper-coloured yet contented bride. 

When Capetown swelters in heat, Muizenberg is 
generally ten degrees cooler, though, most obligingly, 
the water of the Indian Ocean at Muizenberg is ten 
degrees warmer than that of the Atlantic at Cape- 
town, owing to the Antarctic current setting in to the 
latter. 

At Muizenberg we found half the population of 
South Africa in the water in front of the biggest 
bathing-house I have ever seen. The handling of the 
surf -plank requires some care, for it is a short, heavy 
board, and in the back-wash is apt to fly back on the 
unwary, hitting them on their food-receptacle, and ef- 
fectually (to use a schoolboy term) "bagging their 
wind." You walk out in the shoal water up to your 
shoulders, and as a big sea comes in, you throw your- 
self chest foremost on to your plank, and are then 
carried along on the top of the roller at the pace of 
a leisurely train (an Isle of Wight train), to be de- 
posited with a bang on the sandy beach. It is really 
capital fun, but alas for my flower-wreathed South 
Sea Island maidens! Excluding our own party I 
only saw many amply waisted ladies disporting them- 
selves staidly in the water, and the surrounding cine- 
mas and tea-shops might have been at Brighton, ex- 
cept that they were far smarter and much better kept. 
Owing to the strongly marked facial characteristics 
of some of the customers in these places, who were 
mostly from Johannesburg, I at first imagined that 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 269 

I must have wandered inadvertently into Jerusalem, 
or that I had perhaps drifted to some fashionable 
health resort on the shores of the Dead Sea. 

Groote Schuur, the stately house built by Cecil 
Rhodes for himself, and by his will bequeathed as the 
official home of the Premier of South Africa, became 
very familiar to me. These modern adaptations of 
the Dutch Colonial style have one marked advantage 
over their originals. In the old houses the stoep is 
merely an uncovered terrace on which the house 
stands. In the modern houses the stoep is a shady, 
pillared, covered gallery, which in hot weather be- 
comes the general living-room of the family. Hav- 
ing built his house, Cecil Rhodes employed agents to 
hunt up in Holland fine specimens of genuine old 
Dutch furniture with which to plenish it. Some of 
these agents surely exceeded their instructions in the 
matter of grandfather clocks. They must have abso- 
lutely denuded the Low Countries of these useful 
timepieces, for at every step at Groote Schuur a fresh 
solemn-faced Dutch clock ticks gravely away, to re- 
v mind one how time is passing. Rhodes collected a 
j very fine library, but he had a curious fad for type- 
1 written copies of his favourite books, which fill an 
( entire bookcase in the library. Rhodes paid an im- 
mense price for the splendid set of seventeenth-cen- 
tury Brussels tapestries in the dining-room, illustrat- 
ing the "Discovery of Africa," and the magnificent 
Cordova leather in the drawing-room must also have 
been a costly acquisition. The deep ravine running 
beside the house he had planted with blue hydrangeas 



270 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

f throughout its length ; when these are in flower, inter- 
I spersed with scarlet and orange cannas, they form the 
most glorious mass of colour imaginable, as do the 
hedges of pink and white oleanders in the garden, 
each one with its smaller, attendant clipped hedge of 
pale-blue plumbago. 

To me, I confess, the most interesting thing in the 
house was General Botha himself. When he talked 
of the future of South Africa in slow, rather laboured 
English (for this medium was always a little diffi- 
cult for him), one felt that one was in the presence 
of a really great man. His transparent honesty, and 
his obvious sincerity of purpose, stood out as clearly 
as his strong common sense. On looking at his power- 
ful, almost stern, face, one realised that here was a 
man who would allow nothing to turn him from his 
purpose once he was convinced that he was right; a 
man, too, to whom anything in the way of underhand 
intrigue, or backstairs negotiations, would be tempera- 
mentally repugnant. The chivalrous foeman had be- 
come the most loyal ally, and an ally of whom the 
entire British Empire should be proud. There was 
nothing tortuous about the farmer turned soldier, and 
the soldier turned statesman. 

Of Mrs. Botha I should not like to say too much, 
lest I might be accused of flattery. As I shall pres- 
ently relate, she was wonderfully kind to a very sick 
lad whom I brought out to Africa with me. 

There is a curious custom in South Africa of drink- 
ing tea at eleven o'clock in the morning. So en- 
grained is the habit that the streets of Capetown at 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 271 

eleven o'clock are black with business men rushing 
from their offices to the nearest tea-shop in search of 
this reviving draught ; in fact, I believe that in offices 
there is a rigid line of demarcation between the seniors 
who go out for this indispensable cup of tea and the 
juniors who have to have it brought them. 

At Groote Schuur at eleven o'clock there was al- 
ways a great gathering for this important ceremony, 
and naturally the Dutch element usually predomi- 
nated. I could never find any trace of racial bitter- 
ness amongst the men ; with some of the women it was 
rather different. Onlookers are apt to be more bitterly 
partisan than those who have taken actual part in the 
conflict. 

/ A mile or so from Groote Schuur House stands 
I the beautiful Rhodes Memorial, on the slopes of the 
Devil's Peak. This austere temple of milk-white 
granite, with the great flight of steps flanked by 
bronze lions leading up to it, and its backing of pine 
trees, is in absolute harmony with its surroundings, 
and its very severity seems typical of the rugged en- 
ergy of the man whose memory it commemorates. I 
cannot help wishing, though, that Mr. Herbert Baker, 
its architect, had built it on rather a larger scale, for 
its gigantic environment appears to dwarf the monu- 
ment when seen from a few miles off. Watts's figure 
of "Physical Energy," to be appreciated, must be seen 
here in the position for which it was designed. Stand- 
ing at the foot of the great flight of stairs, with its 
background of purple mountain, and Africa stretch- 
ing away endlessly below it, it is really magnificent. 



272 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

The replica erected in Kensington Gardens, and 
placed with singular infelicity on grass between an 
avenue of elm trees, gives but little idea of the effect 
of the original, towering high over what Rhodes main- 
tained was the finest view in the world, a view extend- 
ing over the immense expanse of the Cape Flats, and 
embracing two oceans, with the splendid mountains 
of Hottentot's Holland in the background. If the 
bronze rider, gazing with shaded eyes over the Africa 
that Rhodes loved, is typical of his life, the calm white 
austerity of the temple in the background seems sym- 
bolical of the peace which that restless soul has now 
found. 

The vineyards, oaks and wheatfields of the com- 
paratively well-watered Cape peninsula are not rep- 
resentative of the rest of the Union. Once the train 
has laboriously clambered 3,000 feet up the Hex River 
Pass, real Africa commences. Endless tracts of roll- 
ing arid veld, with an atmosphere so clear that it is 
impossible for a newcomer to determine whether the 
kopje seen in the distance is five miles, ten miles, or 
twenty miles away. I quite understand the fascina- 
tion of these bare stretches of veld and the irresistible 
attraction which Africa exercises over her children, 
for it is unlike anything else in the world. 

I have a theory that when Moses "removed the 
swarms of flies from Pharaoh," he banished them to 
the southern extremity of the continent, where the 
flies, imagining that their services might some day be 
required again to plague the Egyptians, have kept 
themselves in a constant state of mobilisation ever 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 273 

since. In no other way can the plague of flies in 
South Africa be accounted for. 

The wonderful effect of the dry air of the Cape 
peninsula, and of the drier air of the High Veld in 
cases of tuberculosis is a matter of common knowl- 
edge, for was not Cecil Rhodes himself a standing ex- 
ample of an almost miraculous recovery? All of 
which brings me to the episode of the Sick Boy, and 
if I dwell on it at some length I do so intentionally 
for the comfort and better encouragement of those 
battling with the same disease. I first met the Sick 
Boy (hereinafter for the sake of brevity termed the 
"S.B.") at the house of one of my oldest friends, 
who had an annual cricket-party for the benefit of his 
son. Amongst the schoolboy eleven staying in the 
house was a tall and very thin lad of sixteen, who 
showed great promise as a bowler. My hostess told 
me that this boy was suffering from tuberculosis, that 
he had had to leave Eton at fifteen to undergo a very 
severe internal operation from which he had only 
just recovered, and that when the party broke up, he 
was going straight into a nursing-home to prepare 
for another equally severe operation. Every time he 
played cricket he had to be put to bed at once after 
the match, and to be fed on warm milk. The lad had 
tremendous pluck ; in spite of his weakness he insisted 
on taking part in the games and amusements of the 
other boys, and proved very good at all of them. 

Three years later I met the S.B. again. He had 
spent the interval entirely in sanatoria and nursing- 
homes, except for a few months at St. Moritz in the 



274 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

Engadine, and had undergone six major operations, 
the last one entailing the removal of his left ear, 
though the external ear had been left. The unfor- 
tunate lad, who seemed to have had most of the work- 
ing "spare parts" of his anatomy removed, was a walk- 
ing triumph of modern operative surgery, but his dis- 
ease had clearly made advances. He was then living 
in an open-air hut at his father's place, and his con- 
dition was obviously critical. As I was myself going 
to South Africa, I proposed to his father (he had lost 
his mother as a child) that the boy should accompany 
me, pointing out the wonders the dry South African 
climate had effected in similar cases, and the advan- 
tages of a long sea-voyage. So it was settled. As I 
was fully alive to the responsibilities I was incurring 
I took my valet with me, in case additional help 
should be required. Billy, the S.B., came on board, 
long, lanky, and pitiably emaciated. His abnormally 
brilliant colour, and his unnaturally bright eyes be- 
trayed the progress the disease had made with him. 
He revived at once in the warmth, and I had consid- 
erable difficulty in restraining his super-abundant vi- 
tality, for he played deck-cricket all day, and entered 
himself for every single event in the ship's sports, re- 
gardless of his very narrow available margin of 
strength. After arriving in Africa, as the S.B. could 
not have stood the noise and racket of a big hotel, we 
found most comfortable quarters in a quiet little place 
in the delightful suburb of Rondebosch. I wished to 
go up-country, and as it was obvious that the S.B. 
could never have stood the heat, fatigue, and dust of 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 275 

long railway journeys during the height of the South 
African summer, I found myself in a difficult posi- 
tion. I had the most stringent directions from the 
doctors as to what the S.B. might or might not do. 
He was on no account to ride, either a horse or a bi- 
cycle ; bathing might prove instantly fatal to him ; he 
was only to play cricket, golf, or lawn-tennis in strict 
moderation, followed each time by a compulsory rest. 
I knew the S.B. well enough by now to realise that, 
the moment my back was turned, he would want to do 
all these things, if merely to show that he could do 
them as well as anybody else, quite regardless of con- 
sequences. Mrs. Botha came to the rescue, and with 
extraordinary kindness, told me to send the S.B. to 
Groote Schuur, where she would undertake to look 
after him. As I have hinted earlier, I have seldom 
come across so delightful a family as the Bothas, 
father, mother, sons and daughters alike ; so fortunate 
Billy the S.B. was transferred with his belongings to 
Groote Schuur, where he was immensely elated at be- 
ing allowed to use Cecil Rhodes' sumptuous private 
bathroom. This bathroom was entirely lined with 
Oriental alabaster; the bath itself was carved out of 
a solid block of green marble, and the very bath- 
taps were exquisitely chiselled bronze Tritons, riding 
on dolphins. When I returned to Capetown I found 
the S.B. quite one of the Botha family, being ad- 
dressed by everybody by his Christian name. He 
played lawn-tennis and billiards daily with the Gen- 
eral, and should he prove refractory (a not infrequent 
occurrence) the General had only to threaten, "I shall 



276 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

have to make you smoke another of my black cigars, 
Billy," for the S.B. to capitulate instantly with a 
shudder, for he had gruesome recollections of the 
effects one of these powerful home-grown cigars had 
produced on him upon a previous occasion. 

When we sailed from South Africa, Mrs. Botha 
came down herself to the liner to see that Billy's cabin 
was comfortable, and that he had all the appliances 
he required, such as hot-water bottles, etc., and she 
presented him with a large parcel of home-made deli- 
cacies for his exclusive use on the voyage home. Noth- 
ing could have exceeded her kindness to this afflicted 
lad, of whose very existence she had been unaware 
three months earlier. 

Before we had been at sea a week, the S.B. man- 
aged to get a sunstroke. He grew alarmingly ill, and 
the ship's doctor told me that he had developed tuber- 
cular meningitis, and that his recovery was impos- 
sible. I gave the S.B. a hint as to the gravity of his 
case, but the boy's pluck was indomitable. "I am go- 
ing to sell that doctor," he said, "for I don't mean to 
die now. I have sold the doctors twice already when 
they told me I was dying, and I am going to make 
this chap look silly, too, for I don't intend to go 
out." Soon after he relapsed into unconsciousness. 
Meningitis affects the eyes, and the poor S.B. could 
not bear one ray of light, so the cabin was carefully 
darkened, and the electrician replaced the white bulbs 
in the cabin and alley-way with green ones. As we 
were approaching the equator the heat in that closed- 
up cabin was absolutely suffocating, the thermometer 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 277 

standing at over 100 degrees. Still the sick lad felt 
chilly, and had to be surrounded with hot-water bot- 
tles, whilst an ice-pack was placed on his head. I and 
my valet took it in turns to sit up at nights with him, 
as every quarter of an hour we had to trickle a tea- 
spoonful of iced milk and brandy into his mouth. As 
each morning came round, the doctor's astonishment 
at finding his patient still alive was obvious, and he 
assured me again and again that it could only be a 
question of hours. One morning my valet, whose turn 
as night-nurse it was, awoke me at 4 a.m with the 
news that "Mr. William has come to again, and is 
screaming for beef -tea." I went into the cabin, where 
I found the S.B. quite conscious, and insistently de- 
manding beef -tea. By sheer grit and force of will the 
lad had pulled himself out of the very Valley of the 
Shadow. We got him the best substitute for beef- 
tea to be obtained on a liner at 4.30 a.m., and two 
hours later he was clamouring for more. His prog- 
ress to recovery was uninterrupted as soon as we were 
able to carry him into the open air, his eyes protected 
by some most ingenious light-proof goggles, cleverly 
fashioned on board by the second engineer. The S.B. 
had learnt from the doctor of some strictly private 
arrangements which I had made with the captain of 
the ship should his disease unfortunately take a fatal 
turn. I found him one morning rolling about in his 
bunk with laughter. "It is really the most comical 
idea I ever heard of in my life," he spluttered, shak- 
ing with merriment. "Fancy carrying me home in 
the meat-safe! Just imagine father's face when you 



278 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

told him that you had got me down in the refrigera- 
tor! I never heard anything so d d funny," and 

as fresh humorous possibilities of this novel form of 
home-coming occurred to him, he grew quite hysteri- 
cal with laughter. He was immensely amused, too, at 
learning that during the most critical period of his 
illness I had got the captain to stop the ship's band, 
and to rope-off the deck under his cabin window. I 
will not deny that the S.B. required a good deal of 
supervision; for instance, when at length allowed a 
little solid food, I found that he had selected as a 
suitable invalid repast, some game-pie and a straw- 
berry ice, which had, of course, to be sternly vetoed; 
he had entered, too, for every event in the ship's sports, 
and though he was so weak that he could barely stand, 
he had every intention of competing. I have seldom 
met any one with such wonderful personal courage as 
that boy, and he would never yield one inch to his 
enemy; the strong will was for ever dominating the 
frail body. 

On this voyage we had a number of young people 
on board who were crossing the equator for the first 
time, so Neptune kindly offered to leave his ocean 
depths and to board the ship in the good old-fashioned 
orthodox style to further these young folks' education. 
Just as we crossed the Line, the ship was hailed from 
the sea, her name and destination were ascertained, 
and she was peremptorily ordered to heave to, Nep- 
tune naturally imagining that he was still dealing 
with sailing ships. The engines were at once stopped, 
and Neptune, with his Queen, his Doctor, his Bar- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 279 

ber, his Sea Bears and the rest of his Court, all in 
their traditional get-up, made their appearance on the 
upper deck, to the abject terror of some of the little 
children, who howled dismally at this alarming irrup- 
tion of half -naked savages with painted faces. I my- 
self enacted Neptune in an airy costume of fish-scales, 
a crown, and a flowing beard and wig of bright sea- 
green. Of course my Trident had not been forgot- 
ten. Amphitrite, my queen, was the star-comedian of 
the South African music-hall stage, and the little man 
was really extraordinarily funny, keeping up one in- 
cessant flow of rather pungent gag, and making the 
spectators roar with laughter. All the traditional 
ceremonies and good-natured horseplay were scrupu- 
lously adhered to, and some twenty schoolboys and 
five adults were duly dosed, lathered, shaved, hosed, 
and then toppled backwards into a huge canvas tank 
of sea-water, where the boys persisted in swimming 
about in all their clothes. The proceedings were ter- 
minated by Neptune and his entire Court following 
the neophytes into the tank, and I am afraid that we 
induced some half-dozen male spectators to accom- 
pany us into the tank rather against their will, one 
old German absolutely fuming with rage at the un- 
precedented liberty that was being taken with him. 
During these revels the S.B., though only just con- 
valescent, and still in his bunk, had to be locked into 
his cabin, or he would have insisted on taking part in 
them, and would have certainly died an hour after- 
wards. 

Upon the outbreak of war in August, 1914, the 



$ 



280 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

S.B. made three attempts to obtain a commission, only 
to be promptly rejected by the medical officers when 
they examined him. He then tried to enlist as a 
private, under a false name, but no doctor would pass 
him, so he went as a workman into a Small Arms' Fac- 
tory, and made rifle-stocks for a year. The indoor 
life and the lack of fresh air aggravating his disease, 
he was forced to abandon this work, when, by some 
means which I have never yet fathomed, he managed 
to get a commission in the Royal Air Force. The 
doctors, being much overworked, let him through with- 
out a medical examination, and in due time the S.B. 
qualified as a pilot, when, owing to engine trouble, 
he promptly crashed in his seaplane into the North 
Sea, in January, and was an hour in the water before 
being rescued. This icy bath somehow arrested the 
progress of his disease, and he was subsequently sent 
to the Dardanelles. Here, whilst attempting to bomb 
Constantinople, the S.B. got shot down and cap- 
tured by the Turks. During his eighteen months of 
captivity he underwent the greatest privations from 
cold and hunger, being insufficiently clad and most in- 
sufficiently fed. Upon his release after the Armis- 
tice, he was examined by a British doctor, who told 
him, to his amazement, that every trace of his dire 
disease had vanished, nor were the most eminent spe- 
cialists of Harley Street subsequently able to dis- 
tinguish the faintest lingering signs of tuberculosis. 
He was completely cured, or rather by his strong will- 
power he had completely cured himself. 

Billy (the term of S.B. being clearly no longer ap- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 281 

plicable) is now married to a pretty and charming 
wife; he is the proud father of a sturdy son, and is 
putting on weight at an alarming rate, his waist- 
coat already exhibiting a convexity of outline that 
would be justifiable only in the case of an alderman. 
He is a partner in a prosperous West End business, 
and will be most happy to book any orders you may 
give him for wine. 

I I have purposely dwelt at length on the case of the 
S.B. in order to encourage other sufferers from this 
disease to realise how strong the personal factor is 
in their cases, and how much they can help themselves. 
Here was an apparently hopeless case of tuberculosis, 
and yet a lad by his indomitable grit and personal 
courage fought his enemy, continued to fight him, 
and finally conquered him, all by sheer determina- 
tion never to give in. Let others in his position take 
heart of grace and continue the struggle, and may 
they, too, rout their enemy as the S.B. did. Nil des- 
I perandum! I may add that an ice-cold bath of an 
I hour in the North Sea in January, and eighteen 
j months' incarceration in a Turkish prison, are not ab- 
isolutely essential items in the cure. 



CHAPTER X 

In France at the outbreak of war — The tocsin — The "Voice of 
the Bell" at Harrow — Canon Simpson's theory about bells — 
His "five-tone" principle — Myself as a London policeman — 
Experiences with a celebrated church choir — The "Grill- 
room Club" — Famous members — Arthur Cecil — Some neat 
answers — Sir Leslie Ward — Beerbohm Tree and the vain 
old member — Amateur supers — Juvenile disillusionment — 
The Knight — The Baron — Age of romance passed. 

In July, 1914, 1 was in Normandy, undergoing medi- 
cal treatment for a bad leg. Black as the horizon 
looked towards the end of that month, I personally 
believed that the storm would blow over, and that the 
clouds would disperse, as had happened so often pre- 
viously when the relations between Germany and 
France had been strained almost to the breaking-point 
by the megalomaniac of Potsdam. 

On the fateful Saturday, August 1, 1914, I was at 
a little old Norman chateau standing on the banks of 
the placid river Mayenne. It was a glorious after- 
noon, and I was in a boat on the river fishing with the 
two daughters of the house. We suddenly saw the 
local station-master running along the bank in a state 
of great agitation, brandishing a telegram in his hands. 
He asked us where he could find "M. le Maire," for 
my host, amongst other things, was mayor of the 
little neighbouring town, and added with a despairing 
gesture, "Helas! C'est la guerre !" showing us the 
official telegram from Paris. We at once landed and 

282 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 283 

accompanied the station-master up to the house, where 
our host was dumbfounded at the news, for, like me, 
he had continued to hope against hope. Five minutes 
later he was knotting the official tricolour scarf round 
his waist, for it fell to his duty as Maire to read the 
Decree of Mobilisation in the town, and I accom- 
panied him there. I shall never forget that sight. 
Sobbing and weeping women everywhere; the older 
men, who remembered 1870 and knew what this mobi- 
lisation meant, endeavouring to master their emotion 
and to keep up an appearance of calm; the younger 
men, who were to be thrust into the furnace, standing 
dazed and anxious-eyed at the prospect of the un- 
known to-morrow which they were to face. My host, 
after reading the Decree, added a few words of his 
own, such words as appeal to the French tempera- 
ment; brief, full of hope and courage, and breathing 
that intensely passionate love of France which lies at 
the bottom of every French soul. The Maire then or- 
dered the tocsin to be sounded in half an hour's time, 
when it would also ring out from every church steeple 
in France. 

The rolling Normandy landscape lay bathed in 
golden sunshine, the wheatfields ripe for the sickle, 
and the apple, orchards rich in their promise of fruit. 
There was not one breath of wind to ruffle the sleek 
surface of the Mayenne, and the wealth of timber of 
leafy Normandy stood out faintly blue over the tawny 
stretches of the wheatfields. The whole scene, flooded 
with mellow sunshine, seemed to breathe absolute 
peace. 



284 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

Suddenly, from a distant church steeple, came two 
sharp strokes from a bell, then a pause, and then two 
strokes were repeated. The town we had just left 
rang out two louder notes, also followed by a pause. 
It was the tocsin ringing out its terrible message ; and 
yet another steeple sounded its two notes, and another 
and another. The news rung out by those two sharp 
strokes is always bad news. The tocsin rings for great 
fires, for revolution, or, as in this case, for a Declara- 
tion of War. Before us lay Normandy, looking inex- 
pressibly peaceful in the evening sunlight, and over 
that quiet countryside the tocsin was sending its tid- 
ings of woe, as it was from every church tower in 
France. Next morning the only son, the gardener, 
the coachman, and the man-servant left the old Nor- 
man chateau to join their regiments; the son and the 
gardener never to return to it. To the end of my 
life I shall remember the weeping women, and the 
haggard-eyed men in that little town, and the two 
sharp strokes of the tocsin, sounding like the knell 
of hope. 

Nothing can carry a more poignant message than 
a bell. In my time at Harrow, should a member of 
the school actually die at Harrow during the term, the 
school bell was tolled at minute intervals, from 10 
to 10.30 p.m., with the great bass bell of the parish 
church answering it, also at minute intervals. The 
school bell, which rang daily at least ten times for 
school, for chapel, for Bill, or for lock-up, had an 
exceedingly piercing voice. We were used to hear- 
ing it rung quickly, so when it sent out its one shrill 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 285 

note into the unaccustomed night, a note answered in 
half a minute by the great boom of the bourdon from 
the Norman church steeple, the effect was most im- 
pressive. In my house it was the custom to keep ab- 
solute silence during the tolling of the passing-bell. 
JThe British schoolboy is really a highly emotional 
creature, though he would sooner die than betray the 
J fact. When the tolling began, boys would troop in 
; their night-clothes into one another's rooms for com- 
jpanionship, and remain there in silence, ill at ease, 
1 until the tolling, to every one's relief, ceased. There 
was another ordeal to be faced, too, at the final con- 
cert. Amongst our school songs was one called "The 
Voice of the Bell," describing the various occasions 
on which the school bell rang. It had a bright, cheery 
tune, and was very popular, but there was a special 
verse, only sung when a boy had actually died at Har- 
row during the term. The melody of the special verse 
was the same as that of the other verses, but the har- 
monies were quite different. It was sung very slowly 
as a solo to organ accompaniment, and it touched 
every one. The words were: 

"Hard to the stroke, another and another, 

Ding, ding, ding. 
Tolling at night for the passing of a brother, 

Ding, ding, ding, 
y One more life from our life is taken, 
Work all done, and fellowship forsaken, 
Playmate sleep — and far away awaken, 

Ding, ding, ding;" 

the "ding, ding, ding" being taken up by the chorus. 
\ All the boys dreaded the singing of this verse, at 



286 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

least I know that I did, for no one felt quite sure of 
himself, and the little fellows cried quite openly. 
Three times it was sung during my Harrow days, 
and always by the same boy, chosen on account of his 
very sweet voice. He was a friend of mine, and he 
used to tell me how thankful he was to get through 
his solo without breaking down, or, as he preferred 
to put it, "without making an utter ass of myself." 
I think that this special verse is no longer sung, as 
being too painful for all concerned. 

Whilst on the subject of bells, I may say that the 
late Canon Simpson of Fittleworth was a great friend 
of mine. Canon Simpson was an enthusiast about 
bells, not only about "change-ringing," on which sub- 
ject he was a recognised authority, but also about the 
designing and casting of bells. He would talk to 
me for hours about them, though I know about as 
much of bells as Nebuchadnezzar knew about jazz- 
dancing. The Canon maintained that very few bells, 
either in England or on the continent, were in tune 
with themselves, and therefore could obviously not be 
in tune with the rest of the peal. Every bell gives 
out five tones. The note struck, or the "tonic" (which 
he called the "fundamental"), the octave above it, 
termed the "nominal," and the octave below it, which 
he called the "hum note." In a perfect bell these three 
octaves must be in perfect unison, but they very sel- 
dom are. The "nominal," or upper octave, is nearly 
always sharper than the "fundamental," and the "hum 
note" is again sharper than that, thus producing an 
unpleasant effect. Any one listening for it can de- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 287 

tect the upper octave, or "nominal,' ' even in a little 
handbell. Let them listen intently, and they will catch 
the sharp "ting" of the octave above. The "hum note" 
in a small bell is almost impossible to hear, but let any 
one listen to a big bass bell, and they cannot miss it. 
It is the "hum note" which sustains the sound, and 
makes the air quiver and vibrate with pulsations. For 
many years I have lived under the very shadow of 
Big Ben, and I can hear its "hum note" persisting 
for at least ten seconds after the bell has sounded. 
Big Ben is a notable instance of a bell out of tune 
with itself. In addition to the three octaves, every 
bell gives out a "third" and a "fifth" above the tonic, 
thus making a perfect chord, and for the bell to be 
perfect, all these five tones must be in absolute tune 
with each other. Space prevents my giving details as 
to how this result can be attained. Under the Canon's 
tuition I learnt to distinguish the "third," which is 
at times quite strident, but the "fifth" nearly always 
eludes me. During Canon Simpson's lifetime he 
could only get one firm of bell-founders to take his 
"five-tone" principle seriously. I may add that Eng- 
lish bell-founders tune their bells to the "nominal," 
whilst Belgian and other continental founders tune 
them to the "fundamental," both, according to Canon 
Simpson, essentially wrong in principle. 

Three days ago I read a leading article in a great 
morning daily, headed "The Renascence of bell-found- 
ing in England," and I learnt from it that one Eng- 
lish bell-foundry was casting a great peal of bells for 
the War Memorial at Washington, and that another 



288 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

firm was carrying out an order for a peal from, won- 
der of wonders, Belgium itself, the very home of bells, 
and that both these peals were designed on the "Simp- 
son five-tone principle." I wish that my old friend 
could have lived to see his theories so triumphantly 
vindicated, or could have known that the many years 
which he devoted to his special subject were not in 
vain. 

Had any one told me, say in 1912, that in two years' 
time I should be patrolling the streets of London at 
night in a policeman's uniform as a Special Constable, 
I should have been greatly surprised, and should have 
been more astonished had I known of the extraordi- 
nary places I should have to enter in the course of my 
duties, and the curious people with whom I was to be 
brought into contact. I had occasion one night, whilst 
on my beat, to enter the house of a professional man 
in Harley Street, whose house, in defiance of the 
"Lighting Orders," was blazing like the Eddystone 
Lighthouse. I gave the doctor a severe lecture, and 
pointed out that he was rendering himself liable to a 
heavy fine. He took my jobation in very good part, 
for I trust that as a policeman I blended severity with 
sympathy, and promised to amend his ways, and then 
added hospitably, "As perhaps you have been out 
some time, constable, you might be glad of some sand- 
wiches and a glass of beer. If you will go down to 
the kitchen, I will tell the cook to get you some." So 
down I went to the kitchen, and presently found my- 
self being entertained by an enormously fat cook. 
John Leech's Pictures from Punch have been familiar 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 289 

to me since my earliest days. Some of his most stereo- 
typed jokes revolved round the unauthorised presence 
of policemen in kitchens, but in my very wildest 
dreams it had never occurred to me that I, myself, 
when well past my sixtieth year, would find myself 
in a policeman's uniform seated in a London kitchen, 
\ being regaled on beer and sandwiches by a corpulent 
I cook, and making polite conversation to her. I hasten 
' to disclaim the idea that any favourable impression 
I may have created on the cook was in any way due 
to my natural charm of manner; it was wholly to be 
ascribed to the irresistible attraction the policeman's 
uniform which I was wearing traditionally exercises 
over ladies of her profession. Between ourselves, my 
brother Claud was so pleased with his Special Con- 
stable's uniform that when a presentation portrait of 
himself was offered to him he selected his policeman's 
uniform to be painted in, in preference to that of a full 
colonel, to which he was entitled, and his portrait can 
now be seen, as a white-haired and white-moustached, 
but remarkably erect and alert Special Constable, 
seventy-five years old. 

I had during the war another novel but most inter- 
esting experience. A certain well-known West End 
church has been celebrated for over fifty years for 
the beauty and exquisite finish of its musical Services. 
As 1915 gave place to 1916, one by one the profes- 
sional choir-men got called up for military service, 
and finally came the turn of the organist and choir- 
master himself, he being just inside the limit of age. 
The organist, besides being a splendid musician, hap- 



290 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

pened to be a skilled mechanic, so he was not sent 
abroad, but was given a commission, and sent down to 
Aiders-hot to superintend the assembling of aircraft 
engines. By getting up at 5 a.m. on Sundays, he was 
able to be in London in time to take the organ and 
conduct the choir of his church. Meeting the organist 
in the street one day, he told me that he was in despair, 
for all the men of the choir but two had been called 
up, and the results of ten years' patient labour seemed 
crumbling away. He meant, though, to carry on 
somehow, all the same, and begged me to find him 
a bass for the Cantoris side. I have hardly any voice 
at all myself, but I had been used to singing in a 
choir, and can read a part easily at sight, so I volun- 
teered as a bass, and for two years marched in twice, 
and occasionally three times, every Sunday into the 
church in cassock and surplice with the choir. The 
music was far more elaborate and difficult than any 
to which I had been accustomed, but it was a great 
privilege and a great delight to sing with a choir 
trained to such absolute perfection. The organist 
could only spare time for one short practice a week, 
during which we went through about one-third of the 
music we were to sing on Sunday, all the rest had to 
be read at sight. Had not the boys been so highly 
trained it would have been quite impossible ; they lived 
in a Resident Choir School, and were practised daily, 
and never once did they let us down. I do not think 
that the congregation had the faintest idea that half 
the elaborate anthems and Services they were listen- 
ing to, though familiar to the boys, had never been 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 291 

seen by the majority of the choir-men until they came 
into church, and that they were being read at sight. 
One particularly florid Service, much beloved by the 
congregation, was known amongst the choir as "Chu 
Chin Chow in E flat." The organist always managed 
somehow to produce a really good solo tenor, as well 
as an adequate second tenor, mostly privates and 
bluejackets for the time being, but professional mu- 
sicians in their former life. It was a point of honour 
with this scratch-choir to endeavour to maintain the 
very high musical standard of the church, and I really 
think that we did wonders, for we gave a very good 
rendering of Cornelius' beautiful but abominably diffi- 
cult eight-part unaccompanied anthem for double 
choir, "Love, I give myself to thee," after twenty 
minutes' practice of it, and difficult as is the music, 
we kept the pitch, and did not drop one-tenth of a 
tone. At times, of course, the scratch-choir made mis- 
takes, and then the organ crashed out and drowned 
us. The congregation imagined that the organist 
was merely showing off the power and variety of tone 
of his instrument; we knew better, and understood 
that this blare was to veil our blunder. It was really 
absorbingly interesting work. During Lent we sang, 
unaccompanied, Palestrina and Vittoria, and this six- 
teenth-century polyphonic music requires singing with 
such exactitude that it needs the utmost concentration 
and sustained attention, if the results are to be satis- 
factory. The organist was quite pleased with his 
make-shift choir; though, as a thorough musician, he 
was rather exacting. At choir-practice he would say, 



292 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

"Very nicely sung, gentlemen, so nicely that I want it 
all over again. Try and do it a little better this 
time, and with greater accuracy, please." It is the 
custom in this church to sing carols from a chamber 
up in the tower on the three Sundays following Christ- 
mas. They are sung unaccompanied, and almost in 
a whisper, and the effect in the church below is really 
entrancing. To reach this tower-chamber we had to 
mount endless flights of stairs to the choir-boys' 
dormitory, and then to clamber over their beds, and 
squeeze ourselves through an opening about a foot 
square (built as a fire-escape for the boys) in our 
surplices. After negotiating this narrow aperture, I 
shall always sympathise with any camel attempting 
to insinuate itself through the eye of a needle. In a 
small, low-roofed chamber, where there is barely 
standing-room for twenty people, it is difficult even 
for a highly trained choir to do itself justice. The 
low roof tends to deaden the pitch, and in so confined 
a space the singers cannot get into that instinctive 
touch with each other which makes the difference be- 
tween a good and a bad choir; still, people in the 
church below told me that the effect was lovely. On 
one occasion, owing to force of circumstances, it had 
been impossible for the men to rehearse the carols, 
though the boys had been well practised in them. We 
sung them at sight unaccompanied; rather a musical 
feat to do satisfactorily. 

I would not have missed for anything my two 
years' experience with that church choir ; every Sun- 
day it was a renewed pleasure. 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 293 

During 1915 and 1916 one got used to meeting 
familiar friends in unfamiliar garbs, and in a certain 
delightful club, not a hundred miles from Leicester 
Square, which I will veil under the impenetrable dis- 
guise of the "Grill-room Club," I was not surprised 
to find two well-known and popular actors, the one in 
a naval uniform, the other in an airman's. I might 
add that the latter greatly distinguished himself in 
the air during the war. 

The "Grill-room" is quite a unique club. It con- 
sists of one room only, a lofty, white-panelled hall, 
with an open timber roof. Nearly every distinguished 
man connected with the English stage for the last 
forty years has been a member of this club; Henry 
Irving, Charles Wyndham, Arthur Sullivan, W. S. 
Gilbert, George Grossmith, Corney Grain, George 
Alexander, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, and Arthur 
Cecil are only a few of the celebrities for whom this 
passing show is over, but who were members of the 
club. It is unnecessary for me to give a list of the 
present members ; it is enough to say that it comprises 
every prominent English actor of to-day. 

Arthur Cecil had a delightful nature, with a marked 
but not unpleasant "old-maidish" element in it. For 
instance, no mortal eye had ever beheld him without 
a little black handbag. Wherever Arthur Cecil went 
the little bag went with him. There was much specu- 
lation amongst his friends as to what the contents 
of this mysterious receptacle might be. Many people 
averred, in view of his notoriously large appetite, 
that it was full of sandwiches, in case he should become 



294 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

smitten with hunger whilst on the stage, but he would 
tell no one. As I knew him exceedingly well, I begged 
on several occasions to have the secret of the little 
black bag entrusted to me, but he always turned my 
question aside. After his death, it turned out that the 
little bag was a fully fitted-up medicine-chest, with 
remedies for use in every possible contingency. Should 
he have fancied that he had caught a chill, a tea-spoon 
of this; should his dressing-room feel over-hot, four 
drops of that; should he encounter a bad smell, a 
table-spoonful of a third mixture. Poor Cecil's in- 
terior must have been like a walking drug-store. He 
was quite inimitable in eccentric character parts, his 
"Graves" in Money being irresistibly funny, and his 
"Baron Stein" in Diplomacy was one of the most 
finished performances we are ever likely to see, a 
carefully stippled miniature, with every little detail 
carefully thought out, touched up and retouched. I 
do not believe that the English stage has even seen 
a finer ensemble of acting than that given by Kendal 
as "Julian Beauclerc," John Clayton as "Henry 
Beauclerc," and Squire Bancroft as "Count Orloff" 
when the piece was originally produced at the Hay- 
market, in the great "three-men" scene in the Second 
Act of Diplomacy, the famous "Scene des trois hom- 
ines" of Sardou's Dora; nothing on the French stage 
could beat it. Arthur Cecil bought a splendid fur 
coat for his entrance as "Baron Stein," but after the 
run of the piece nothing would ever induce him to 
wear his fur coat, even in the coldest weather. He 
was obsessed with the idea that should Diplomacy 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 295 

ever be revived, his fur coat might grow too shabby 
to be used for his first entrance, so it reposed per- 
, petually and uselessly in camphor. Arthur Cecil was 
cursed with the Demon of Irresolution. I have never 
known so undecided a man ; it seemed quite impossible 
for him to make up his mind. Sir Squire Bancroft 
has told us in his Memoirs how Cecil, on the night of 
the dress rehearsal of Diplomacy, was unable to decide 
on his make-up. He used a totally different make-up 
in each of the three acts, to the great bewilderment of 
the audience, who were quite unable to identify the 
white-moustached gentleman of the First Act with 
the bald-headed and grey -whiskered individual of the 
Second. This irresolution pursued poor Cecil every- 
where. Coming in for supper to the "Grill-room" 
after his performance, he would order and counter- 
. order for ten minutes, absolutely unable to come to a 
decision. He invariably ended by seizing a pencil, 
closing his eyes tightly, and whirling his pencil round 
and round over the supper-list until he brought it 
down at haphazard somewhere. As may be imagined, 
repasts chosen in this fashion were apt to be somewhat 
incongruous. After the first decision of chance, Cecil 
would murmur to the patient waiter, "Some apple- 
tart to begin with, Charles." Then another whirl, 
and "some stuffed tomatoes," a third whirl, and "salt 
fish and parsnips, Charles, please. It's a thing that I 
positively^ detest, but it has been chosen for me, so 
bring it." Cecil went for an annual summer holiday 
to France, but as he could never decide where he 
should go, the same method came into play, and with 



296 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

a map of France before him, and tightly closed eyes, 
the whirling pencil determined his destination for 
him. He assured me that it had selected some un- 
known but most delightful spots for him, though 
at times he was less fortunate. The pencil once lit 
on the mining districts of Northern France, and Cecil 
with his sunny nature professed himself grateful for 
this, declaring that but for the hazard of the whirling 
pencil, he would never have had an opportunity of 
realising what unspeakably revolting spots Saletrou- 
sur-Somme, or Saint- Andre-Linfecte were. He was 
a wonderfully kind-hearted man. Once, whilst play- 
ing at the Court Theatre, he noticed the call-boy 
constantly poring over a book. Cecil, glancing over it, 
was surprised to find that it was not The Boy High- 
wayman of Hampsteadj but a treatise on Algebra. 
The call-boy told him that he was endeavouring to 
educate himself, with a view to going out to India. 
Cecil bought him quite a library of books, paid for a 
series of classes for him, and eventually, thanks to 
Cecil, the call-boy passed second in a competitive 
examination, and obtained a well-paid appointment in 
a Calcutta Bank. Cecil, or to give him his real name, 
Arthur Blount, was also an excellent musician, and 
his setting of The Better Land is to my mind a beau- 
tiful one. He was an eccentric, faddy, kindly, gentle 
creature. 

At the "Grill-room," actor-managers are constantly 
pouring out their woes. One well-known actor- 
manager came in full of a desperate row he had had 
with his leading lady because the printer in the bills 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 297 

of the new production had forgotten the all-important 
"and" before her name. She merely appeared at the 
end of the list of characters, whereas she wanted 
"AND Miss Lilian Vavasour." "Such a ridiculous 
fuss to make about an 'and,' " grumbled the actor- 
manager. "Yes," retorted Comyns-Carr, "and un- 
fortunately 'and and 'art do not always go together 
on these occasions." 

The neatest answer I ever heard came from the 
late Lord Houghton. Queen Victoria's predilection 
for German artists was well known. She was painted 
several times by Winterhalter, and after his death was 
induced by the Empress Frederick to give sittings 
to the Viennese artist, Professor von Angeli. Angeli's 
portrait of the Queen was, I think, exhibited in the 
' Royal Academy in 1876. Some one commenting on 
I this, said that it was hard that the Queen would never 
give an English artist a chance; after Winterhalter 
it was Angeli. "Yes," said Lord Houghton, "I fancy 
that the Queen agrees with Gregory the Great, and 
says, 'non Angli sed Angeli.' " 

Of minor neatness was an answer made to my 
mother by a woodman at Baron's Court. Apparently 
at the time of her marriage the common dog-wood 
was hardly known in England as a shrub, although 
in the moist Irish climate it flourished luxuriantly. 
Every one is familiar with the shrub, if only on ac- 
count of its bark turning a bright crimson with the 
early frosts. My mother on her first visit to Baron's 
Court saw a woodman trimming the dog-wood, and 
inquired of him the name of this unfamiliar red- 



298 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

barked shrub. On being told that it was dog-wood she 
asked, "Why is it called dog-wood?'* "It might be on 
account of its bark," came the ready answer. 

Pellegrini the caricaturist, the celebrated "Ape" of 
Vanity Fair, was a member of the "Grill-room," as 
is his equally well-known successor, Sir Leslie Ward, 
the "Spy" of that now defunct paper, who has drawn 
almost every notability in the kingdom. Sir Leslie is, 
I am glad to say, still with us. Leslie Ward has the 
speciality of extraordinary accidents, accidents which 
could befall no human being but himself. For in- 
stance, in pre-taxi days Ward was driving in a han- 
som, and the cabman taking a wrong turn, Ward 
pushed up the little door in the roof to stop him. The 
man bent his head down to catch his fare's directions, 
and Leslie Ward inadvertently pushed three fingers 
right into the cabman's mouth. The driver, hotly 
resenting this unwarranted liberty, bit Leslie Ward's 
fingers so severely that he was unable to hold either 
pencil or brush for a fortnight. This is only one 
example of the extraordinary mishaps in which this 
gifted artist specialises. 

In the recently published Life of Herbert Beer- 
bohm Tree, the collaborators do not allude to that 
curious vein of impish humour which at times pos- 
sessed him, turning him into a sort of big rollicking 
schoolboy. There was one episode which I can give 
with Tree's actual words, for I wrote them down at 
the time, as a supreme example of the art of "leg- 
pulling." Amongst the members of the "Grill-room 
Club" was an elderly bachelor, whom I will call Mr. 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 299 

Smith. "Mr. Smith," who has now been dead for 
some years, was wholly undistinguished in every way. 
He ate largely, and spoke little, but Tree had dis- 
covered that under his placid exterior he concealed a 
vein of limitless vanity. One evening "Mr. Smith" 
startled the club by breaking his habitual silence, 
and bursting into poetry. Apropos of nothing at all, 
he suddenly declaimed two lines of doggerel, which, 
as far as my memory goes, ran as follows : 

"I and my doggie are now left alone, 
Johnstone, to-morrow, will give him a bone." 

He then relapsed into his ordinary placid silence, 
and soon after went home. Beerbohm Tree made at 
once a bet of £5 with another member that he would 
induce old Mr. Smith to repeat this rubbish lying at 
full length under the dining-table, seated in the fire- 
grate (it was summer-time), and hidden behind the 
window-curtains. The story got about until every one 
knew of the bet except Mr. Smith, so next night the 
club was crowded. The unsuspecting Smith sat 
silently and placidly ruminating, when Tree appeared 
after his performance at His Majesty's and lost no 
time in approaching his subject. "My dear Smith," 
he began, "you repeated last night two lines of poetry 
which moved me strangely. The recollection of them 
has haunted me all day ; say them again, I beg of you." 
The immensely gratified Smith at once began: 

"I and my doggie are now left alone, 
Johnstone, to-morrow, will give him a bone." 

"Exquisite!" murmured Tree. "Beautiful lines, and 
distinctly modern, yet without the faintest trace of 



300 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

decadence. It is the note of implied tragedy in them 
that appeals to me, for were Johnstone unfortunately 
to die in the night there would, of course, be no bone 
for the faithful four-footed friend. Repeat them 
again, please." After a second repetition Tree went 
on: "You have Vart de dire to an amazing extent, 
Smith, and you have the priceless gift of les larmes 
dans la voice. I know that no pecuniary inducements 
I might offer would make any appeal to you; still, 
could I but get you to repeat those beautiful lines 
on the stage of my theatre, all London would flock 
to hear you. I should wish now for them to float 
vaguely to my ears, as the sound of village chimes 
borne on the breeze ; out of the vague ; out of the un- 
known. Ha! I have it! Would you mind, Smith, 
lying under the table here, and exercising your gift 
as a reciter from there. I, on my side, will put myself 
into a fitting frame of mind by eschewing such grossly 
material things as tobacco and alcohol, and will eat 
of the simple fruits of the earth. Waiter, apples, 
many apples! Now, Smith, I beg of you," and Tree, 
munching an apple, made a gesture of appeal, and 
stood on the table, a second apple in his left hand. 

"Really I," faltered Mr. Smith with a gratified 
smile, "really . . . Well ... do you mean it?" and 
he slid obediently under the table, and repeated the 
idiotic lines. "Gorgeous! Positively gorgeous!" 
sighed Tree. "Now, Smith, Bismarck once, when at 
the zenith of his power, electrified an audience of 
German savants by repeating two simple lines of 
German poetry seated in the fireplace. I must em- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 301 

phasise the fact that it was when he was at the very 
zenith of his power, for otherwise, of course, he would 
have been unable to produce this effect. I should 
like to see whether your touching lines would move 
me as strongly coming from so unexpected a quarter. 
See! I will place The Times for you to sit on, the 
Daily Telegraph for you to lean against. Two of the 
most powerful organs of public opinion both equally 
proud to minister to your comfort. I beg of you, 
Smith." "Really . . . it's rather unusual . . . but if 
you want it," smirked Mr. Smith, and the doggerel 
was duly repeated from the fireplace. "Now, Smith, 
I want those haunting lines to reach me faintly, as 
from some distant ocean cavern, or like the murmurs 
sea-shells whisper into the ear. Ha ! the window-cur- 
tains will muffle the sound; say it from behind them, 
I pray." When this was over Tree buried his face in 
his hands, feigning deep emotion, and Mr. Smith re- 
gained his place wreathed in smiles, convinced that 
he had achieved an unparalleled triumph as a reciter, 
but Tree had won his £5. 

That gifted man Charles Brookfield was also a 
member of the "Grill-room." There was a slight note 
of cynicism, and a touch of bitterness in his humour, 
for he was quite conscious that he had not achieved 
the success that his brilliant abilities seemed to prom- 
ise. It was characteristic of Brookfield that when 
attacked with the tuberculosis to which he eventually 
succumbed, he should draw up the prospectus and 
rules of the "Ninety-nine Club" (those who have ever 
had their lungs tested will understand the allusion), 



302 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

a document in which he gave full rein to his vein of 
cynical and slightly macabre humour. 

Some twenty-five years ago, I and another mem- 
ber of the "Grill-room Club" used occasionally to 
"walk-on" in the great autumn Drury Lane melo- 
dramas. We knew the manager well, and upon send- 
ing in our cards to him, we could figure as guests 
at a ball, or as two of the crowd on a racecourse. I 
liked seeing the blurred outlines of the vast audience 
over the dazzling glare of the footlights, and the de- 
tails of the production of these complicated spectacu- 
lar pieces amused me when seen from the stage. In 
one of these melodramas, I think the Derby Winner, 
there was a spirited auction scene on the stage, when 
Mrs. John Wood bid £30,000 for a horse. I had an 
almost irresistible impulse to over-bid her and to 
shout "forty thousand pounds." Mrs. John Wood 
would have proved, I am sure, equal to the emer- 
gency, and would have got the better of me. Between 
us, we should probably have run the horse up to a 
quarter of a million, and the consternation of the rest 
of the company would have been very amusing to 
witness, but it would not have been quite fair on our 
friend the manager, so I refrained. 

A great-nephew of mine, then an Eton boy of fif- 
teen, had heard of these experiences and longed to 
share them; so, with the manager's consent, I took 
him "on" the first day of his holidays. He was one 
of the crowd at an imaginary Oxford and Cambridge 
boat-race, cheering for all he was worth, when he 
suddenly saw four of his Eton friends sitting together 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 303 

in the front row of the stalls, and nodded to them. 
The astonishment of these youths at seeing the boy 
they had travelled up with that morning, moving 
about the stage of Drury Lane Theatre as though he 
were quite at home there, was most comical. They 
gaped round-eyed, refusing to believe the evidence 
of their senses. 

I believe that the appeal of the theatre is simply 
due to the fact that the majority of human beings 
retain the child's love of "make-believe" but are too 
unimaginative to create a dream-world for themselves. 
Having lost the child's power of creation, a more 
material dream-world has to be elaborately con- 
structed for them, with every adjunct that can 
heighten the sense of illusion, an element the un- 
imaginative are unable to supply for themselves. 
They require all their "i's" carefully dotted and their 
"t's" elaborately crossed; so they love "real water" 
on the stage, and "real leaves" falling in a forest scene, 
and genuine taxi-cabs rumbling about the stage so 
realistically that no strain need be put on their imagi- 
nation. 

At the age of seven or eight I came to the conclu- 
sion that one would go through life shedding illusions 
as trees shed their leaves in November. I had an illus- 
trated History of England which contained a picture 
of knights tilting; splendid beings all in armour, with 
plumes waving from their helmets, seated on armoured 
horses and brandishing gigantic lances. I asked my 
governess whether there were any knights left. She, 
an excellent but most matter-of-fact lady, assured me 



304 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

that there were plenty of knights still about, after 
which I never ceased pestering her to show me one. 
One day she delighted me by saying, "You want to see 
a knight, dear. There is one coming to see your 
father at twelve o'clock to-day, and you may stand 
on the staircase and see him arrive.' ' This was an 
absolutely thrilling episode! One of these glorious 
creatures of Romance was actually coming to our 
house that day! I may add that my mother was un- 
well at the time, and that the celebrated doctor Sir 
William Jenner, who had then been recently knighted, 
had been called in for a consultation. At Chester- 
field House there is a very fine double flight of white 
marble stairs, and, long before twelve, wild with ex- 
citement, I took my stand at the top of it. How this 
magnificent being's armour would clank on the 
marble! Would he wear a thing like a saucepan on 
his head, with a little gate in front to peep through? 
It would be rather alarming, but the waving plumes 
would look nice. Supposing that he spoke to me, 
how was I to address him? Perhaps "Grammercy, 
Sir Knight!" would do. I was rather hazy as to its 
meaning, but it sounded well. It might also be polite 
to inquire how many maidens in distress the knight 
had rescued recently. Would he carry his lance up- 
stairs and leave it outside my father's door? If so, 
I could play with it, and perhaps tilt at the footman 
with it. Would he leave his prancing charger in the 
courtyard in the care of his esquire? The possibili- 
ties were really endless. Presently our family doctor 
came upstairs with another gentleman, and they went 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 305 

into my father's room. I said "Good-morning" to 
our own doctor, but scarcely noticed the stranger, 
for I was straining my ears to catch the first clank 
of the knight's armour on the marble pavement of 
the hall below. Time went on; our doctor and the 
stranger reappeared and went downstairs, and still no 
knight arrived. At last I went back to my governess 
and told her that the knight must have forgotten, 
for he had never come. I could have cried with dis- 
appointment when told that the frock-coated stranger 
was the knight. That a knight! Without armour, or 
plumes, or lance, or charger! To console me for my 
disappointment I was allowed to see my father in his 
full robes as a Knight of the Garter before he left 
for some ceremony of the Order. This was the first 
intimation I had received that we could include a 
knight in our own family circle. My father's blue 
velvet mantle was imposing, and he certainly had 
plumes ; but to my great chagrin he was not wearing 
one single scrap of armour, had no iron saucepan on 
his head, and was not even carrying a gigantic lance. 
It seemed to be the same with everything else. In 
my illustrated History there was a picture of the 
Barons forcing King John to sign Magna Chart a at 
Runnymede. They had beards, and wore long velvet 
dressing-gowns, with lovely, long, pointed shoes, and 
carried swords nearly as big as themselves. I asked 
my governess if there were any barons left, and she 

told me that Lord B , a great friend of my 

family's, was a baron. This was dreadful. Lord 
B was dressed like any one else, had no beard, 



306 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

and instead of beautiful long shoes shaped like tooth- 
picks, with flapping, pointed toes, he had ordinary 
everyday boots. He never wore a velvet dressing- 
gown or carried a big sword, and no one could pos- 
sibly imagine him as coercing King John, or indeed 
any one else, to do anything they did not want to do. 
I asked to see a noble; I was told that I met them 
every day at luncheon. Like all properly constituted 
boys I longed to live on an island. I was told that I 
already enjoyed that privilege. It really was a most 
disappointing world ! 

To remedy this state of things, and as a protest 
against the prosaic age in which we lived, my young- 
est brother and I devised some strictly private dramas. 
One dealing with the adventures of Sir Alphonso and 
the lovely Lady Leonora lingers in my memory, and 
I recall every word of the dialogue. This latter was 
peculiar, for we had an idea that to be archaic all per- 
sonal pronouns had to be omitted. Part of it, I re- 
member, ran, "Dost love me, Leonora?" "Do." 
"Wilt fly with me?" "Will." "Art frightened, fair 
one ?" "Am." Everything in this thrilling drama led 
up to the discovery of the hidden treasure which the 
far-seeing Sir Alphonso had prudently buried in the 
garden in case of emergencies. Treasure had, of 
course, to consist of gold, silver, and coin. Some one 
had given me a tiny gold whistle; though small, it 
was unquestionably of gold, and my brother was the 
proud possessor of a silver pencil-case. These un- 
fortunate objects must have been buried and disin- 
terred countless times in company with a French 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 307 

franc-piece. To the eye of faith the whistle and the 
pencil-case became gleaming ingots of gold and silver, 
and the solitary franc transformed itself into iron- 
bound chests gorged with ducats, doubloons, or pieces- 
of -eight: the last having a peculiarly attractive and 
romantic sound. 

/ In such fashion did we make our juvenile protest 
against the drab-coloured age into which we had been 

\ born. 



CHAPTER XI 

Dislike of the elderly to change — Some legitimate grounds of 
complaint — Modern pronunciation of Latin — How a Eu- 
ropean crisis was averted by the old-fashioned method — 
Lord Dufferin's Latin speech — Schoolboy costume of a 
hundred years ago — Discomforts of travel in my youth — A 
crack liner of the "eighties" — Old travelling carriages — 
An election incident — Headlong rush of extraordinary turn- 
out — The politically minded signalman and the doubtful 
voter — "Decent bodies" — Confidence in the future — Con- 
clusion. 

To point out that elderly people dislike change is to 
assert the most obvious of truisms. Their three-score 
years of experience have taught them that all changes 
are not necessarily changes for the better, as youth 
fondly imagines; and that experiments are not in- 
variably successful. They have also learnt that no 
amount of talk will alter hard facts, and that the law 
that effect will follow cause is an inflexible one which 
torrents of fluent platitudes will neither affect nor 
modify. Even should this entail their being labelled 
with the silly and meaningless term of "reactionary," 
I do not imagine that their equanimity is much upset 
by it. It is, perhaps, natural for the elderly to make 
disparaging comparisons between the golden past 
and the neutral-tinted present ; so that one shudders 
at reflecting what a terrific nuisance Methuselah must 
have become in his old age. One can almost hear 
the youth of his day whispering friendly warnings 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 309 

to each other: "Avoid that old fellow like poison, 
for you will find him the most desperate bore. He 
is for ever grousing about the rottenness of everything 
nowadays compared to what it was when he was a boy 
nine hundred years ago." 

What applies to Methuselah may apply, in a lesser 
degree, to all of us elderly people, though I think 
that we are justified when we lament a noticeable de- 
cline in certain definite standards of honour which in 
our day were almost universally accepted both in 
private and in public life. Even then some few may 
have bowed the knee at the shrine of "Monseigneur 
1' Argent"; but it was done almost furtively, for "peo- 
ple on the make," or unblushingly "out for them- 
selves," were less to the fore then than now, and were 
most certainly less conspicuous in public life. 

We can also be forgiven for regretting a marked 
decline in manners. Possibly in hurried days when 
every one seems to crave for excitement, there is but 
little time left for those courtesies customary amongst 
an older generation. 

There is no need to enlarge on the immense changes 
the years have brought about during my lifetime. 
Amongst the very minor changes, I notice that when 
my great-nephews quote any Latin to me, I am un- 
able to understand one single syllable of it, and be- 
tween ourselves I fancy that this modern pronuncia- 
tion of Latin would be equally unintelligible to an 
ancient Roman. 

Our old-fashioned English pronunciation of Latin 
may have been illogical, but on one occasion it helped 



810 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

to avert a European war. The late Count Bencken- 
dorff, the last Russian Ambassador to the Court of 
St. James's, a singularly fascinating man, was pro- 
tocolist to the Congress of Berlin in 1878, and as such 
was present at every sitting of the Congress. He told 
me that at one meeting of the Plenipotentiaries, Prince 
Gortschakoff announced that Russia, in direct con- 
travention of Article XIII of the Treaty of Paris of 
1856, intended to fortify the port of Batoum. This 
was expressly forbidden by the Treaty of Paris, so 
Lord Beaconsfield rose from his chair and said quietly, 
"Casus belli," only he pronounced the Latin words 
in the English fashion, and Count Benckendorff as- 
sured me that no one present, with the exception of 
the British delegates, had the glimmer of an idea 
of what he was talking about. They imagined that 
he was making some remark in English to Lord Salis- 
bury, and took no notice of it whatever. Lord Salis- 
bury whispered to his colleague, and ultimately Prince 
Gortschakoff withdrew the claim to fortify Batoum. 
"But," added Count Benckendorff, "just imagine the 
consternation of the Congress had Lord Beaconsfield 
hurled his ultimatum to Russia with the continental 
pronunciation 'cahsous bellee!'" Just picture the 
breaking up of the Congress, the frantic telegrams, 
the shrieking; headlines, the general consternation, 
and the terrific results that might have followed ! And 
all these tremendous possibilities were averted by our 
old-fashioned English pronunciation of Latin! 

My old Chief and godfather, the late Lord Duf- 
ferin, in his most amusing Letters From High Lati- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 311 

iu&es, recounts how he was entertained at a public 
dinner at Rejkjavik in Iceland by the Danish Gov- 
ernor. To his horror Lord Dufferin found that he 
was expected to make a speech, and his hosts asked 
him to speak either in Danish or in Latin. Lord 
Dufferin, not knowing one word of Danish, hastily re- 
assembled his rusty remnants of Latin, and began, 
"Insolitus ut sum ad publicum loquendum," and in 
proposing the Governor's health, begged his audience, 
amidst enthusiastic cheers, to drink it with a "haustu 
longo, haustu forti, simul atque haustu." 

Such are the advantages of a classical education! 

My younger relatives, who naturally look upon me 
as being of almost antediluvian age, sometimes ask me 
to describe the discomforts of an all-night coach jour- 
ney in my youth, or inquire how many days we oc- 
cupied in travelling from, say, London to Edinburgh. 
They are obviously sceptical when I assure them that 
my memory does not extend to pre-railway days. I 
am surprised that they do not ask me for a few in- 
teresting details of occasions when we were stopped 
by masked highwaymen on Hounslow Heath in the 
course of our journeys. 

My father told me that when he first went to Har- 
row in September, 1823, at the age of twelve, he rode 
all the way from London, followed by a servant carry- 
ing his portmanteau on a second horse. My father's 
dress sounds curious to modern ears. Below a jacket 
and one of the big flapping collars of the period, he 
wore a waistcoat of crimson cut-velvet with gold but- 
tons, a pair of skin-tight pantaloons of green tartan 



312 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

with Hessian boots to the knee, further adorned with 
large brass spurs with brass chains. A schoolboy of 
twelve would excite some comment were he to appear 
dressed like that to-day, though my father assured 
me that he could run in his Hessian boots and spurs 
as fast as any of his school-fellows. 

Though my recollections may not go back to pre- 
railway days, the conditions under which we travelled 
in my youth would be thought intolerable now. No 
sleeping- or dining-cars, long night- journeys in un- 
heated, dimly lit carriages devoid of any kind of con- 
venience, and sea-passages in small, ill-equipped 
steamers. All these were accepted as a matter of 
course, and as inevitable incidents of travel. 

The first long-distance voyage I ever made was 
just forty years ago, and I should like people who 
grumble at the accommodation provided in one of 
the huge modern liners to see the arrangements 
thought good enough for passengers in 1882. Our 
ship, the Britannia of the Pacific Steam Navigation 
Co., was just over 4,000 tons, and we passengers con- 
gratulated each other loudly on our good fortune in 
travelling in so fast and splendid a vessel. The Bri- 
tannia had no deck-houses, the uncarpeted, under- 
rated saloon was the only place in which to sit, and 
its furniture consisted of long tables with swinging 
racks over them, flanked by benches. This sumptuous 
apartment was illuminated at night by no less than 
forty candles, a source of immense pride of the chief 
steward. The sleeping-cabins for a six weeks' voyage 
were smaller and less comfortably fitted than those 



HERE, THERE ANT) EVERYWHERE 313 

at present provided for the three hours' trip between 
Holyhead and Kingstown ; at night one dim oil-lamp 
glimmered in a ground-glass case fixed between two 
cabins, but only up to 10.30 p.m., after which the ship 
was plunged into total darkness. As it was before 
the days of refrigerators, the fore part of the deck 
was devoted to live stock. Pigs grunted in one pen, 
sheep bleated in another, whilst ducks quacked and 
turkeys gobbled in coops on either side of them. No 
one ever thought of grumbling; on the contraiy, we 
all experienced that stupid sense of reflected pride 
which passengers in a crack liner feel, for the Bri- 
tannia then enjoyed a tremendous reputation in the 
Pacific. Certainly, seen from the shore, the old Bri- 
tannia was a singularly pleasing object to the eye, 
with her clipper bows, the graceful curve of her sheer, 
and the beautiful lines of her low hull unbroken by 
any deck-houses or top-hamper. 

The traveller of to-day is more fortunate; he ex- 
pects and finds in a modern liner all the comforts 
he would enjoy in a first-class hotel ashore; and finds 
them too in a lesser degree on railway journeys. 

The long continental tours of my father and mother 
in the early days of their married life, were all made 
by road in their own carriages, and as their family 
increased they took their elder children with them in 
their wanderings, so what with children, nurses and 
servants, they travelled with quite a retinue. 

I think that my father must have had a sentimental 
attachment for the old travelling carriages which had 
taken him and his family in safety over one-half of 



314 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

Europe, for he never parted with them, and various 
ancient vehicles reposed in our coach-houses, both in 
England and Ireland. The workmanship of these old 
carriages was so excellent that some of them, re- 
painted and re-varnished, were still used for station- 
work in the country. There was in particular one 
venerable vehicle known as the "Travelling Clarence," 
which remained in constant use for more than sixty 
years after its birth. This carriage must have had 
painful associations for my elder brothers and sisters, 
for they travelled in it on my parents' continental 
tours. My mother always complimented their nurse 
on the extraordinarily tidy appearance the children 
presented after they had been twelve hours or more 
on the road; she little knew that the nurse carried a 
cane, and that any child who fidgeted ever so slightly 
at once received two smart cuts on the hand from this 
cane, so that their ultra-neat appearance on arriving 
at their destination was achieved rather painfully. 
This Clarence was an unusually comfortable and easy- 
rolling carriage ; it hung on Cee springs, and was far 
more heavily padded than a modern vehicle; it had 
vast pockets arranged round its capacious grey in- 
terior, and curious little circular pillows for the head 
were suspended by cords from its roof. On account 
of its comfort it was much used in its old age for 
station-work in Ireland. Should that old carriage 
have had any feelings, I can thoroughly sympathise 
with them. Dreaming away in its coach-house over its 
varied past, it must have remembered the vine-clad 
hills through which it had once rolled on the banks of 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 315 

the swift-flowing, green Rhone. It cannot have for- 
gotten the orange groves and olives of sunny Prov- 
ence overhanging the deep -blue Mediterranean, the 
plains of Northern Italy where the vines were fes- 
tooned from tree to tree, the mountains and clear 
streams of the Tyrol, or the sleepy old Belgian cities 
melodious with the clash of many bells. Each time 
that it was rolled out of its coach-house I imagine that 
every fibre in its antique frame must have vibrated at 
the thought that now it was to re-commence its wan- 
derings. Conscious though the old carriage doubtless 
was that its springs were less lissom than they used 
to be, and that the axles which formerly ran so 
smoothly now creaked alarmingly, and sent sharp 
twinges quivering through its body, it must have felt 
confident that it could still accomplish what it had 
done fifty years earlier. I feel certain that it started 
full of expectations, as it felt itself guided along the 
familiar road which followed the windings of the lake, 
with the high wooded banks towering over it, and 
then along a mile of highroad between dense planta- 
tions of spruce and Scotch fir, until the treeless, stone- 
walled open country of Northern Ireland was reached. 
The hopes of the old carriage must have risen high as 
the houses of the little town came into view ; first one- 
storied, white-washed and thatched ; then two-storied, 
white-washed and slated, all alike lying under a blue 
canopy of fragrant peat smoke. The turn to the 
right was the Dublin road, the road which ultimately 
led to the sea, and to a curious heaving contrivance 
which somehow led over angry waters to new and 



316 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

sunnier lands. No; the guiding hands directed its 
course to the left, down the brae, and along the over- 
familiar road to the station. The old Clarence must 
have recognised with a sigh that its roaming days were 
definitely over, and that henceforth, as long as its 
creaking axles and stiffening springs held together, it 
could only look forward to an uneventful life of mo- 
notonous routine in a cold, grey Northern land ; and, 
between ourselves, these feelings are not confined 
to superannuated carriages. 

The old Clarence had one splendid final adventure 
before it fell to pieces from old age. At the 1892 
Election I was the Unionist candidate for North 
Tyrone. In the North of Ireland political lines of 
demarcation are drawn sharply and definitely. Peo- 
ple are either on one side or the other. I was quite 
aware that to win the seat I should have to poll every 
available vote. On the polling day I spent the whole 
day in going round the constituency and was conse- 
quently away from home. Late in the afternoon a 
messenger arrived at Baron's Court announcing that 
an elderly farmer, who lived six miles off and had 
lost the use of his legs, had been forgotten. As, owing 
to his infirmity, he was unable to sit on a jaunting- 
car, it had been arranged that a carriage should be 
sent for him, but this had not been done. The old 
man was most anxious to vote, but could only do so 
were a carriage sent for him, and in less than two 
hours the poll would close. My brother Ernest, and 
my sister-in-law, the present Dowager Duchess of 
Abercorn, were at home, and realising the vital im- 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 317 

portance of every vote, they went at once up to the 
stables, only to find that every available man, horse, 
or vehicle was already out, conveying voters to the 
poll. The stables were deserted. The Duchess recol- 
lected the comfortable old Clarence, and she and my 
brother together rolled it out into the yard, but a car- 
riage without horses is rather useless, and there was 
not one single horse left in the stalls. My brother 
rushed off to see if he could find anything with four 
legs capable of dragging a carriage. He was for- 
tunate enough to discover an ancient Clydesdale cart- 
mare in some adjacent farm buildings, but she was 
the solitary tenant of the stalls. He noticed, how- 
ever, a three-year-old filly grazing in the park, and, 
with the aid of a sieve of oats and a halter, he at 
length succeeded in catching her, leading his two cap- 
tives triumphantly back to the stable-yard. Now 
came a fresh difficulty. Every single set of harness 
was in use, and the harness-room was bare. The 
Duchess had a sudden inspiration. Over the fireplace 
in the harness-room, displayed in a glass show-case, 
was a set of State harness which my father had had 
specially made for great occasions in Dublin : gorgeous 
trappings of crimson and silver, heavy with bullion. 
The Duchess hurried off for the key, and with my 
brother's help harnessed the astounded mare and the 
filly, and then put them to. The filly, unlike the 
majority of the young of her sex, had apparently no 
love for the pomps and vanities of the world, and 
manifested her dislike of the splendours with which 
she was tricked-out by kicking furiously. The un- 



318 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

clipped, ungroqmed f arm-horse^, bedizened with crim- 
son and silver, must have felt rather like a navvy in 
his working clothes who should suddenly find himself 
decked-out with the blue velvet mantle of a Knight of 
the Garter over his corduroys. The Duchess pro- 
posed fetching the old farmer herself, so she climbed 
to the box-seat and gathered the reins into her hands, 
but on being reminded by my brother that time was 
running short, and that the cart-horse^ would require 
a good deal of persuasion before they could be induced 
to accelerate their customary sober walk, she relin- 
quished her place to him. Off they went, the filly still 
kicking frantically, the old Clydesdale mare, glittering 
with crimson and silver, uncertain as to whether she 
was dragging a plough or hauling the King in his 
State coach to the Opening of Parliament at West- 
minster. Once on the level the indignant animals 
felt themselves lashed into an unaccustomed gallop; 
they lumbered along at a clumsy canter, shaking the 
solid ground as they pounded it with their heavy feet, 
the ancient Clarence, enchanted at this last rollicking 
adventure, swaying and rolling behind them like a 
boat in a heavy sea. This extraordinary-looking 
turn-out continued its headlong course over bog-roads 
and through rough country lanes, to the astonishment 
of the inhabitants, till the lame farmer's house was 
reached. He was carefully lifted into the carriage, 
conveyed to the polling-place, and recorded his vote 
at 7.54 p.m., with just six minutes to spare before the 
poll closed. As it turned out I won the seat by fifty- 
six votes, so this rapid journey was really superfluous, 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 319 

but we all thought that it would be a much closer 
thing. 

In the North of Ireland where majorities, one way 
or the other, are often very narrow, electioneering 
has been raised almost to a fine art. A nephew of 
mine was the Unionist candidate for a certain city in 
the North of Ireland during the 1911 election. Here 
again it was certain that his majority could only be 
a very small one, and as is the custom in Ulster every 
individual vote was carefully attended to. One man, 
though a nominal supporter, was notoriously very 
shaky in his allegiance. He was a railway guard and 
left the city daily on the 7.30 a.m. train, before the 
poll would open, returning by the fast train from 
Dublin due at 7.40 p.m. He would thus on the polling 
day have had ample time in which to record his vote. 
The change in his political views was so well known 
that my nephew's Election Committee had written off 
his vote as a hostile one, but they had reckoned with- 
out the railway signalman. This signalman was a 
most ardent political partisan and a strong adherent 
of my nephew's, and he was determined to leave noth- 
ing to chance. Knowing perfectly how the land lay, 
he was resolved to give the dubious guard no oppor- 
tunity of recording a possibly hostile vote, so, on his 
own initiative, he put his signals against the Dublin 
train and kept her waiting for twenty-two minutes', 
to the bewilderment of the passengers, until the strik- 
ing of the clocks announced the closing of the poll. 
Then he released her, and the train rolled into the 
terminus at 8.5 p.m., so I fear that the guard was un- 



320 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

able to record his vote, hostile or otherwise. I think 
that this is an example of finesse in electioneering 
which would never have occurred to an Englishman. 
My nephew won the seat by over fifty votes. 

I have again exceeded the space allotted to me, and 
am reminded by a ruthless publisher of the present 
high cost of production. 

We have strayed together through many lands, and 
should the pictures of these be dull or incomplete, I 
can but tender my apologies. I am quite conscious, 
too, that I have taken full advantage of the privilege 
which I claimed in the first chapter, and that I have 
at times wandered wide from the track which I was 
following. I must plead in extenuation that the 
interminable straight roads of France seem to me less 
interesting than the winding country lanes of Eng- 
land. Indeed, I am unable to conceive of any one 
walking for pleasure along the endless vistas of the 
French poplar-bordered highways, where every ob- 
jective is clearly visible for miles ahead ; it is the Eng- 
lish meandering by-roads, with their twists and turns, 
their unexpected and intimate glimpses into rural life, 
their variety and surprises, which tempt the pedes- 
trian on and on. We may accept Euclid's dictum that 
a straight line is the shortest road between two points ; 
a wandering line, if longer, is surely as a rule the more 
interesting. 

A Scottish clerical friend of mine, the minister of 
a large parish in the South of Scotland, told me that 
there were just two categories of people in the world, 
"decent bodies" and the reverse, and that the result 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 321 

of his seventy years' experience of this world was that 
the "decent bodies" largely predominated. 

Although I am unable to claim quite as many 
years as my friend the old minister, my experience 
coincides with his, the "decent bodies" are in a great 
majority. I have met them everywhere amongst all 
classes, and in every part of the world, and their 
skins are not always white. 

They may not be conspicuously to the fore, for the 
"decent bodies" are not given to self-advertisement. 
They have no love for the limelight, and would be 
distinctly annoyed should their advent be heralded 
with a flourish of trumpets. In the garden-borders 
the mignonette is a very inconspicuous little plant, 
and passes almost unnoticed beside the flaunting 
gaudiness of the dahlia or the showy spikes of the 
hollyhock, yet it is from that modest, low-growing, 
grey-green flower that comes the sweetness that per- 
fumes the whole air, for the most optimistic person 
would hardly expect fragrance from dahlias or holly- 
hocks. They have their uses ; they are showy, decora- 
tive and aspiring, but they do not scent the garden. 

Between 1914 and 1918 I, in common with most 
people, came across countless hundreds of "decent 
bodies," many of them wearing V.A.D. nurse's uni- 
forms. These little women did not put on their nurse's 
uniform merely to pose before a camera with elab- 
orately made-up eyes and a carefully studied sympa- 
thetic expression, to return to ordinary fashionable 
attire at once afterwards. They scrubbed floors, and 
carried heavy weights, and worked till they nearly 



322 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 

dropped, week after week, month after month, and 
year after year, but they were never too tired to 
whisper an encouraging word, or render some small 
service to a suffering lad. I wonder how many thou- 
sands of these lads owe their lives to those quiet, un- 
assuming, patient little "decent bodies" in blue linen, 
and to the element of human sympathy which they 
supplied. And what of the occupants of the hospital 
beds themselves ? We all know the splendid record of 
sufferings patiently borne, of indomitable courage 
and cheerfulness, and of countless little acts of 
thoughtf ulness and consideration for others in a worse 
plight even than themselves. Who, after having had 
that experience, can falter in their belief that the 
"decent bodies" are in a majority? 

I know many people looking forward to the future 
with gloom and apprehension. I do not share their 
views. For the moment the more blatant elements in 
the community are unquestionably monopolising the 
stage and focussing attention on themselves, but I 
know that behind them are the vast unseen armies of 
the "decent bodies," who will assert themselves when 
the time comes. 

These "decent bodies" are not the exclusive product 
of one country, of one class, or of one sex. They 
are to be found "Here, There, and Everywhere." 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Abercorn, Dowager Duchess of, 
316 

A desolate frontier telegraph- 
office, 43 

Algeciras Conference, the, 148 

Amateur mahouts and know- 
ing elephants, 38 

Americans and the sanitation 
of the Panama Canal Zone, 
164 

Anenkoff, General, 71 

Anreith, Anton, Dutch sculp- 
tor, 265 

An unforgettable sunrise, 41 

Argentine estancia, life on an, 
238 

Argentine Republic, venomous 
reptiles of, 243-244; break- 
ing-in horses in, 244-247; 
difficulties of railway con- 
struction in, 251-254 

Assam, a big-game shoot in, 22 

A trick that failed, 54-55 

Australian drivers, recklessness 
of, 23 



B 



Balboa, Vasco Nunez de, dis- 
coverer of the Pacific, 161, 
165; "annexes" "La Pele- 
grina" pearl, 165 

Baden-Powell, General, his 
welcome to Trinidad, 226- 
227 



Baker, Mr. Herbert, archi- 
tect of Rhodes Memorial at 
Devil's Peak, Capetown, 271 
Bancroft, Sir Squire, 294- 

295 
Barbados, 106; "dignity balls" 
at, 108; in quarantine at, 
106; Father Labat, French 
missionary at, 109; a potent 
cocktail, 110 
Barnard, Colonel, 55-57 
"Bartimaeus," author of Un- 
reality, and Bermuda, 210- 
213 
Batavia, an unhealthy canal- 
intersected town, 259 
Bayol, M., 75-76 
Beaconsfield, Lord, 310 
Bear-shooting in Russia, 255 
Beauharnais, Hortense de, wife 
of Louis, King of Holland, 
222 
Beauharnais, Vicomte de, 222 
Benbow, Admiral, death of at 

Port Royal, 105 
Benckendorff,Count, last Rus- 
sian Ambassador to England, 
310 
Bermuda, Sir John Somers 
wrecked on, 1609, 196; an 
economic puzzle, 196; fer- 
tility of, 196; climatal con- 
ditions of, 198; coral reefs 
in, 198-199; coral-reef fish- 
ing in, 199; sea-gardens in, 
199; its Parliament, 204; 
old furniture and silver in, 



325 



326 



INDEX 



207; red and blue birds of, 
209; "Bartimaeus" on, 210; 
mosquitoes in, 212; officers' 
wives in, 213-214; Bishop 
of, on climate, 21 6; strategic 
importance of, 217; loyalty 
of natives of, 218; good 
record of in the Great War, 
219 

"Bermuda Company," the, 197 

"Bermudians, the Song of 
the," 219 

Bird life in the jungle, 35- 
36 

Birds of Bermuda, beautiful, 
209 

Biter bit, the, 50, 54 

Bluebeard chamber, a, 77-78 

Bog Walk, Jamaica, a beauti- 
ful glen, 137-138, 182 

Bonaparte, Joseph, 166 

Boscawen, Admiral, 79 

Botha, Mrs., 270; her kindness 
to a sick youth, 275 

Botha, General, at Groote 
Schuur, 270 

Boxing match, a patrician, 49 

Boy's fight with a shark, a, 
158-159 

Brazil, the Petropolis forest, 
227; fugitive Presidents of, 
229; Cipriano Castro, Presi- 
dent of, 229-230; Juan 
Rosas, dictator-tyrant of, 
230 

Bridgetown, Barbados, 109- 
110; Codrington College at, 
111 

Brookfield, Mr. Charles, 301 

Brown's Town, Jamaica, 143; 
its spacious church, 145 

Buccleuch, the late Duchess 
of, and the Archbishop, 177- 
178 

Buddhist theological library, a 
fine, 64 



Buenos Ayres, the Plaza Eiis- 
kara at, 234-235; a feature- 
less plain, 239; its present 
aspect, 250 

Buxton, Ronald, 189-190 



Cabot, John, discoverer of 
Newfoundland, 196 

Calcutta, Lord Kitchener's 
camouflaged garden at, 43- 
44; Lord Minto holds in- 
vestiture at, 44 

Cambon, M. Paul, 147 

Camoens, Portuguese poet, at 
Macao, 86 

Canada ceded to Britain, 80 

'Canterbury, Archbishop of, and 
the late Duchess of Buc- 
cleuch, 177-178 

Canton, 88; its narrow streets, 
90-91 ; its appalling smells, 
91 ; local devils of, 92 ; 
"City of the Dead" in, 97- 
98 

Canton River, the, 87 

Cape Colony, Simon van der 
Stel, Governor of, 262; 
vine introduced by Van 
Riebeck, 262; Dutch pio- 
neers and, 262; works of art 
at, 264 

Capetown, 258; its substantial 
buildings, 259; giant oaks of, 
259 

Cartagena de Indias, 162 

Castro, Cipriano, Brazil's 
bloodthirsty President, 229- 
230 

Cecil, Mr. Arthur, a capable 
actor, 293-296 

Ceylon, 58; "Devil Dancers" 
in, 59; its enterprising 
planters, 66 



INDEX 



327 



Changeable types of natives on 
hills and plains, 41 

Charles V., 165-166 

Chinese devils and precautions 
against, 94 

Chinese immune from filth dis- 
eases, 92 

Chinese ingenuity, 94; dislike 
of foreigners, 95-96 

Cholera train, a, 20 

"Chu Chin Chow" church Ser- 
vice, a, 290-291 

"City of the Dead/' the, Can- 
ton, 97-98 

Classical education, advantages 
of a, 309 

Clifford, Sir Hugh, 59, 61 

Clinch, Robert, a heroic mid- 
shipman, and his fight with 
a shark, 158-159 

Clive, Lord, 79 

Codrington College, Bridge- 
town, Barbados, 111 

Colombo, the Clapham Junc- 
tion of the East, 68 

Colon, 162; its harbour an ex- 
cellent tarpon fishing-ground, 
162-163, 169 

Columbus, Christopher, 143; 
founds Portobello, 161 

"Command Night" in Dublin, 
a, 52 

Complicated imperial relation- 
ships, 222 

Cooch Behar and Calcutta, a 
diversified 500-mile journey 
between, 18 

Cooch Behar, Maharanee of, 
a graceful and delightful 
hostess, 32, 46, 47 

Cooch Behar, Maharajah of, 
invitation from to shooting- 
party, 17, 20; his incongru- 
ous palace, 21; his army of 
attendants, 25 



Craskell, Mr., builder of King's 

House, Spanish Town, 136 
Crossing the Line, 278 



D 



Darien, William Patterson and 
the ill-fated Scottish settle- 
ment at, 162 

Darjeeling, a cool hill-station, 
40; a transplanted London 
suburb, 42 

Darjeeling-Himalayan Rail- 
way, a Lilliputian concern, 
41 

"Decent bodies" and the re- 
verse, 320-322 

De Grasse, Count, 80 

Des Etangs, M., 60, 61, 62, 70, 
82 

"Devil Dancers" in Ceylon, 59 

Devil's Peak, Rhodes Memorial 
at, 271 

De Vogue, Vicomte Eugene 
Melchior, 71 

Diaz, Porfirio, iron rule of, in 
Mexico, 232 

Dowse, Mr. Serjeant, last of 
the Irish "Barons," 132 

Ducks' Marathon race, a, 87-88 

Dudley, Lady, in Kingston 
earthquake, 174 

Dufferin, Lord, his Letters 
from High Latitudes, quoted, 
310-311 

Dufferin, Helen, Lady, grand- 
daughter of Sheridan, 257 

Dupleix, 78-79; shabby treat- 
ment of, by France, 79-80 

Durian, the, an unsavoury 
Malay fruit, 83 

Dutch pioneers and Cape 
Colony, thoroughness of, 
262-263 



328 



INDEX 



E 



"Educational quartettes," an 
instructive game, 192-193 

Edwards, Bryan, History of 
the British West Indies, 
quoted, 115 

Electioneering poster, an orig- 
inal, 133 

Emperor William at Tangier, 
147 

Empress Eugenie, 223 

Enciso, Martin de, 161 

Englishman's ignorance about 
geography, the, 191 

Erskine, Sir David, 49 



Ferdinand V. of Spain, 165; 

presented with the "La Pele- 

grina" pearl, 165 
Filon, M., on the Bonapartes, 

223 
Foersch, Dr., and the upas 

tree, 67 
Fort Augusta, a charnel-house, 

182 
Francia, Jose, a beneficent 

despot, 232 
French Fleet, the, visit of, to 

Jamaica, 147 



Galdy, Mr. Lewis, and his 
miraculous escape, 181 

Geography, ignorance of Eng- 
lishmen about, 191; a novel 
method of teaching, 192 

Gilbert, James Stanley, author 
of Panama Patchwork, 170 

Goethals, Colonel, and the sani- 
tation of the Panama Canal 
Zone, 164 



Gortschakoff, Prince, 310 
"Grill-room Club," the, a 
unique establishment, 293 ; 
celebrities of, 293 
Groote Schuur, Rondebosch, 
official residence of South 
African Premiers, 261 ; treas- 
ures of, 269; General Botha 
at, 270; tea drinking at, 271 



H 



Haiti, eighteenth century 
troubles in, 120; Toussaint 
l'Ouverture restores order in, 
120 

Hamilton, Lord Claud, 132; 
special constable during 
Great War, 289 

Hamilton, Lord Ernest, and 
the Tyrone 1902 Parlia- 
mentary election, 316 

Hamilton, Lord George, 133 

Harrow College, 141-142; the 
passing bell at, 284-285 

Higginson, Sir George, 51 

Hong-Kong, the Crewe of the 
East, 84 

Houghton, Lord, neat answer 
of, 297 

Ho wells, Mr. William Dean, 
206-207 

Huguenots, French refugees, 
their work in South Africa, 
264 



Illusion shattered, an, 305 

Indian jugglers, 55 

Indian natives, masters of 

camouflage, 43, 45 
Indian orchestra, an efficient, 

22 
Irishman and the Peruvian, 

the, 168 



INDEX 



329 



J 



Jamaica, enervating climate 
of, 117; arrival at Kingston 
Harbour, 123; beauty of, 
125; the Palisadoes, 126; 
Rio Cobre swamps, 126; 
no trace of Spain in, 128; 
Admiral Penn and General 
Venables at, 128; Cromwell 
and, 128; architecture in, 
129; an election in Kingston, 
131; St. Thomas-in-the-Vale, 
138; native orchids- of, 138; 
visit of French Fleet to, 147 

Jamaica Government Railway, 
the, 151 

Jenner, Sir William, 304 



Kandy, a snake-infested spot, 
59; "Temple of the Tooth" 
at, 61-62 

Kazan Madonna, the, 72-73 

Kemp, Norman, 187-190 

Kennedy, Sir Robert, bear- 
shooting in Russia, 255 

Kinchinj anga Mountain, 40 ; 
unscalable, 42 

Kingsley, Charles, and Trini- 
dad, 227 

Kingston, Jamaica, 131, 134 
destroyed by earthquake, 
162; a heap of ruins, 171; 
King's House at, 171 

Kitchener, Lord, 43 ; his camou- 
flaged Calcutta garden, 43- 
44 



Labat, Father, French mission- 
ary, on wealth of Barbados, 
109, HI 



La Bourdonnais, 79 
Lansdowne, Lady, 46 
Lansdowne, Lord, 81, 147 
"La Pelegrina," the great 

pearl, story of, 165-168 
Lathom, Lady, at Jamaica, 150 
Latin, modern pronunciation 

of, 309; averts possible war, 

310 
Le Clerc, General, his ill-fated 

expedition in Haiti, 120-121 
Le Clerc, Mme. (Princess 

Pauline Borghese), her 

subtlety, 121 
Lesseps, Ferdinand de, and 

the Panama Canal, 164 
Lesser Antilles, the, 220 
Louis XV., 80 

Louis, King of Holland, 222 
L'Ouverture, Toussaint, and 

Haiti, 120 
Louw, Mr., a courtly Dutch 

farmer, 266 
Lyon, Patrick, and a Brazilian 

forest, 227-228, 238, 240, 

241, 248 



M 



Macao, gambling houses at, 

85; Camoens at, 86 
"Mad hatter," a, 53 
Magee, Archbishop, and the 

navvy, 146 
Maintenon, Madame de, 223 
Malarial gastritis, Nature's 

remedy for, 157 
Malay Peninsula, the, 83 
"Malignants," Irish, imported 

by Cromwell to Montserrat, 

West Indies, 224 
Malleson, G. B., his life of 

Dupleix, 80 
Mandeville, Jamaica, 146 
Mango trick, the, a poor per- 
formance, 55 



330 



INDEX 



Mangrove swamps, disease- 
breeding, 153; their malefi- 
cent effect on the author, 
155; Nature's lightning cure, 
156 

Mark Twain, 206 

Martin, Mr., and the Peruvian, 
168 

Martinique, handsome and 
tasteful coloured women of, 
223-224 

Meux, Admiral Sir Hepworth, 
Commander-in-Chief in the 
Pacific, 87 

Minto, Lord, 44; holds an 
investiture at Calcutta, 44- 
45 

Monte Diavolo, Jamaica, 139, 
182 

Mont Pelee, eruption of, at 
St. Pierre, Martinique, in 
1902, 173 

Montserrat, negroes of, with 
Irish brogues, 224 

Muizenberg, surf-bathing at, 
267 

Munro, Dr., a great Oriental 
scholar, 82 



N 



Napoleon III., 166, 222 

Napoleon, Joseph, 166 

Napoleon, Prince Louis, 166 

Native dinner, a, 47-48 

Navvy, the, and Archbishop 
Magee, 146 

Negro hysteria in the Kingston 
earthquake, 177 

Nelson, Lord, register of mar- 
riage of, at Nevis, West 
Indies, 225 

Nevis, West Indies, Nelson 
married at, 225; health re- 
sort of whites, 225 



Newfoundland discovered by 
John Cabot, 1497, 196; 
occupied by England, 1583, 
196 

Nicholas II., an ill-starred 
monarch, 80-81 

Nisbet, Frances, wife of Nel- 
son, 225 

Noailles, Comte de, 258 

Normandy at the outbreak of 
war, 282; mobilisation in, 
283; the tocsin in, 284 

North of Ireland electioneer- 
ing, a fine art, 319 

Norton, Mrs., 257 

Nugent, Lady, 105; her diary, 
"Jamaica in 1801," 113-114 
on gormandising, 117-118 
an aldermanic dinner, 118 
her presents from Mme. Le 
Clerc, 121 

Nugent, Sir George, Governor 
of Jamaica, 113, 121, 122; 
Commander - in - Chief in 
Bengal, 123 



O 



Old Ferry Inn, Kingston, a 

fever trap, 135 
Oliphant, General, 62 



Pagerie, Josephine, de la, 

Napoleon I.'s first wife, 222, 

223 
Palisadoes, the, Jamaica, 126 
Palotta, Miss Grace, a Gaiety 

Theatre singer, 82 
Panama, 165 
Panama Canal Zone, Americans 

and the sanitation of the, 

164 



INDEX 



331 



Patterson, William, and the 
settlement of Darien, 162 

Pearl Islands, 165 

Pellegrini, M., "Ape" of Van- 
ity Fair, 298 

Penn, Admiral, at Jamaica, 
128 

Peradeniya Botanical Gardens, 
66 

Philip II. of Spain, 166 

Pidgin English, 84 

Pizarro, 165 

Plassy, 79 

Pluck of an apprentice, 273- 
281 

Pondicherry, 76 

Port Royal, 180-182 

Q 

Quarantine at Barbados, 108 
Queen Mary Tudor, 166 

R 

Rhodes Memorial at Devil's 

Peak, 271 
Rhodes, Cecil, 261 
Rondebosch, Cecil Rhodes' 

house, Groote Schuur, official 

home of S.A. Premiers, at, 

261 ; parish church of, 261 ; 

treasures at, 261 
Riding in comfort, and other- 
wise, 26 
Rio Cobre, Jamaica, 126, 128, 

134. 
Rodney, Lord, 80; monument 

to, at Spanish Town, 136 
"Rope-trick," the, 55-57 
Rosas, Juan, Dictator-Tyrant 

of Argentine Republic, 230; 

betrayal of, 232; death of, 

in England, 232 
Russia, ball at the Winter 

Palace, Petrograd, 256; cost 

of, 256 



"Sacred Tooth" of Buddha, 61 ; 
exposition of, 62-63 

St. Pierre, Martinique, erup- 
tion of Mont Pelee at, in 
1902, 173; desolation of, 222 

Salisbury, Lord, 310 

Sha-mien, an artificial island, 
89 

Silliguri, 40 

Simpson, Canon of Fittle worth, 
an expert on bells, 286 

Smartt, Sir Thomas, 267 

Somers, Sir George, wrecked 
on Bermudas in 1609, 196 

Somerset, the Duchess of, 257 

South Africa, aridity of, 260 

"Spanish Main," a misappre- 
hension as to the term, 160; 
a detestable spot, 161 

Spanish Town, Jamaica, 135; 
Lord Rodney's monument at, 
136; the Cathedral, 136; an 
arrogant inscription in, 136 

Special constable, author's ex- 
periences as a, 288 

Streatfeild, General Sir Henry, 
18, 38; his unique train ex- 
perience, 19 

"Sunday" books of the "six- 
ties," 143 

Swettenham, Lady, visits 
French Fleet at Jamaica, 
150, 156; and the 1907 
Kingston earthquake, 173 

Swettenham, Sir Alexander, 
Governor of Jamaica, 150, 
156; and the 1907 Kingston 
earthquake, 173 



Table Bay, 258 

Table Mountain, 258, 260 



332 



INDEX 



"Temple of the Tooth" at 

Kandy, 61-62 
Tenting in comfort, 23-24 
Theatre, the appeal of, 303 
"The Gondoliers" in the 

jungle, 31 
The Lusiads, by Camoens, writ- 
ten when in exile at Macao, 

86 
Thibault, M., French architect, 

265 
Tiger shooting, 28 
Time's changes, 309 
Tocsin, the, in Normandy, 284 
Tolly Gunge, a sacred stream, 

20; its maleficent effects, 20 
Trade winds, the, 170 
Travel, an ideal form of, 15 
Travelling in the "sixties," 

and now, 311 
Tree, Sir Herbert Beerbohm, 

"leg-pulling" art of, 298- 

301 
Tyrone Parliamentary election, 

1902,, author and, 316 



U 



Upas tree, the, 67 ; Dr. Foersch 

on, 67 
Urquiza, General, betrayer of 

Juan Rosas, 231 



V.A.D. nurses, "decent bodies" 

in blue linen, 322 
Vallombrosa, the Due de, in a 

lively boxing match, 49-50; 

turns the tables on author's 

father, 50 
Vampire bat of Trinidad, 

venomous, 226 



Van der Byl, Mrs., 263 

Van der Stel, Simon, Governor 

of Cape Colony, 262, 264, 

266 
Van Riebeck, Jan, Dutch 

pioneer, 258; vine introduced 

into Cape by, 262 
Variegated fish, 199 
Venables, General, at Jamaica, 

128 
Vikrama Bahu and the "sacred 

tooth" of Buddha, 61 
Volga oil-burning steamers, 74 



W 

"Walking-on" at Drury Lane, 
302 

Ward, Sir Leslie, "Spy" of 
Vanity Fair, 298 

Wellington, the Duke of, at the 
Battle of Vittoria, 166 

West Indies, glamour of, 102; 
Captain Marryat and Mi- 
chael Scott on, 102; former 
deadly climate of, 103; Lady 
Nugent and, 105; training- 
ground for British Navy, 
105; Admiral Benbow and, 
105; Rodney and, 105; 
Bryan Edwards on, 115; 
wealth of, 115; gormandis- 
ing, 117; an aldermanic 
dinner, 118; demerits of, 
220 

William IV., Lord Nelson's 
"best man," 225 

Wilson, Mr. Woodrow, 207 

Winter Palace, Petrograd, ball 
at, 256; cost of, 256 

Winterton, Lady, 52-53 

Wodehouse, Lady, 203 

Wolfe, General, 80 



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